Volume XXXII Number 3 The Chronicle · 2016-04-09 · in this issue March 2003 Volume XXXII Number...
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Chronicle Chronicle A Publication of the American Translators Association March 2003 Volume XXXII Number 3 in this issue marketing The The
Transcript of Volume XXXII Number 3 The Chronicle · 2016-04-09 · in this issue March 2003 Volume XXXII Number...
ChronicleChronicleA Publication of
the American
Translators
Association
March 2003
Volume XXXII
Number 3
in this issuemarketing
TheThe
Plan now to attend ATA’s Annual Conference. Join your colleagues for a rewarding experience in Phoenix, Arizona.
ATA’s 44th Annual Conference will feature:� Over 150 educational sessions offering something for everyone;� The Job Exchange where individuals promote their services and companies meet translators and interpreters;� Over 50 exhibits featuring the latest publications, software, and services available;� Opportunities to network with over 1,200 translators and interpreters from throughout the U.S. and around the world;� and much more!
Preliminary information, along with the Registration Form, will be mailed in July to all ATA members. The conferencerates are listed below. As always, ATA members receive significant discounts.
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Early-Bird (by October 1): $245 $335 $110
One-day: $125 $170 n/a
After October 1: $305 $420 $130
One-day: $160 $220 n/a
Onsite (after October 24): $380 $525 $150
One-day: $195 $270 n/a
Note: Students and one-day participants do not receive a copy of the Proceedings. All speakers must register for the conference.
�� �� ���������� ����The Pointe South Mountain Resort, the host hotel, is the largest all-suite resort in the Southwest, located on 200 acresat the base of South Mountain Park. It is conveniently located at 7777 South Pointe Parkway, just six miles from SkyHarbor International Airport.
Conference attendees can register at the discounted rate of $155 single/double and $175 triple plus tax per night.This rate is good until October 13, 2003. The availability of guest rooms or the group rate cannot be guaranteed afterthat date. In addition, take advantage of the special resort rate that is being offered to ATA conference attendees. For adaily charge of $8.00 per suite, attendees may enjoy unlimited local phone calls, unlimited access for credit card, tollfree, and collect calls, free incoming and outgoing facsimile service, daily in-suite pot of coffee, weekday delivery ofUSA Today, admittance to the Fitness Centre, unlimited tennis and volleyball, and complimentary shuttle to the ArizonaMills Mall.
To make your hotel reservations, contact the Pointe South Mountain Resort at 1-877-800-4888. Be sure to specify thatyou are attending the ATA Annual Conference.
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in this issue March 2003
Volume XXXII
Number 3
Features
15 How to Use Research in SalesBy Renato BeninattoBy creating the habit of buying and using research in your work, you create demand forvaluable information by your people and clients.
17 Can a Translation Company Really Be All Things to All Customers?By Adrian P. Spidle, Jr.The author describes his 10-year odyssey as a translation company owner that led himthrough the Scylla and Charybdis of the translation market as a relative nobody, to theprofitable Elysian Fields of being an important player in very few, very targetedmarket segments.
19 Language Translation, Localization, and GlobalizationBy Laraine TunickSome observations on the changing nature of the language translation industry and whatit means to translators and global companies alike
22 Are We Stupid?By Jost ZetzscheDespite their obvious skills in many areas of translation, including technical translation,many translators are less then equipped when it comes to working with computers. It’snot enough to have the right tools—we also need to know how to use them.
24 The Four Corners of Problem SolvingBy Barton Goldsmith, Ph.D.If you can’t answer all the questions, you may not be looking at the right issue.
A Publication of
the American
Translators
Association
Display Advertising IndexFrom the PresidentFrom the Executive Director Conferences and EventsInternational Certification StudyThe OnionskinDictionary Reviews The Translation InquirerHumor and Translation New Active and Corresponding MembersMarketplace
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American Translators Association225 Reinekers Lane, Suite 590 • Alexandria VA 22314Tel: (703) 683-6100 • Fax (703) 683-6122E-mail: [email protected] • Website: www.atanet.org
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Maggie Rowe
website: www.atanet.org
The ATA Chronicle | March 20034
2003 ChronicleEditorial Calendar
An Easy Reference To ATA Member BenefitsYour ATA membership has never been more valuable. Take advantage of the discounted programs and services available to you as an ATA member. Be sure to tell these companies you are an ATA member andrefer to any codes provided below.
We’ve done everything possible toensure that your address is correct. Butsometimes errors do occur. If you findthat the information on the mailing labelis inaccurate or out of date, please let usknow. Send updates to:The ATA Chronicle • 225 ReinekersLane, Suite 590 • Alexandria, VA 22314Fax (703) 683-6122 •[email protected]
A Publication of the American Translators Association
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Moving? Find anerror with youraddress?
Business Owners InsuranceNational Professional Group(888) 219-8122www.ata-ins.com
Collection Services/ReceivablesManagementDun & BradstreetMike Horoski(800) 333-6497 ext. 7226(484) [email protected]
Credit Card AcceptanceProgram/Professional Services AccountNOVA Information SystemsReference Code: HCDA(888) 545-2207 • (770) 649-5700
MasterCardMBNA AmericaReference Code: IFKV(800) 847-7378 • (302) 457-2165
Life and Disability InsuranceMutual of Omaha(800) 223-6927 • (402) 342-7600www.atanet.org/mutual.htm
Overnight Delivery/Express Package ServiceUPSReference Code: C0000700415(800) 325-7000www.ups.com
Professional Liability InsuranceNational Professional Group(888) 219-8122www.ata-ins.com
Retirement ProgramsWashington Pension Center(888) 817-7877 • (301) 941-9179
Website DevelopmentTwo Rad [email protected]/radtown
...And, of course, as an ATA member you receive discounts on the Annual Conference registration fees and ATA publi-cations, and you are eligible to join ATA Divisions, participate in the online Translation Services Directory, and muchmore. For more information, contact ATA (703) 683-6100; fax (703) 683-6122; and e-mail: [email protected].
The ATA Chronicle Submission GuidelinesThe ATA Chronicle enthusiastically encourages members to submit articles of interest to the fields oftranslation and interpretation.1. Articles (see length specifications below) are due the first of the month, two months prior to the
month of publication (i.e., June 1 for August issue).2. Articles should not exceed 3,500 words. Articles containing words or phrases in non-European
writing systems (e.g., Japanese, Arabic) should be submitted by mail and fax.3. Include your fax, phone, e-mail, and mailing address on the first page.4. Include a brief abstract (two sentences maximum) emphasizing the most salient points of your
article. The abstract will be included in the table of contents.5. Include a brief biography (three sentences maximum) along with a picture (color or B/W). Please
be sure to specify if you would like your photo returned. Do not send irreplaceable photos.6. In addition to a hard copy version of the article, please submit an electronic version either on
disk or via e-mail ([email protected]).7. Texts should be formatted for Word or Wordperfect 8.0. 8. All articles are subject to editing for grammar, style, punctuation, and space limitations.9. A proof will be sent to you for review prior to publication.
Standard Length Letters to the editor: 350 words; Opinion/Editorial: 300-600 words; Feature Articles: 750-3,500words; Column: 400-1,000 words
ChronicleThe
JanuaryFocus: Social SciencesSubmission Deadline:
November 15
FebruaryFocus: Literary Translation Submission Deadline: December 1
MarchFocus: Marketing Submission Deadline: January 1
AprilFocus: Client EducationSubmission Deadline: February 1
MayFocus: Agencies, Bureaus,
and CompaniesSubmission Deadline: March 1
JuneFocus: Professional
Development/OutreachSubmission Deadline: April 1
JulyFocus: Science and TechnologySubmission Deadline: May 1
AugustFocus: Medical Translating
and InterpretingSubmission Deadline: June 1
SeptemberFocus: InterpretingSubmission Deadline: July 1
OctoberFocus: Legal
Translating/InterpretingSubmission Deadline: August 1
November/DecemberFocus: Training and PedagogySubmission Deadline:
September 1
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 5
25 Jurassic Parliament: Or How to Run Great MeetingsBy Ann G. Macfarlane Learn to manage your next board meeting effectively and with flair! You, too, can dealwith the Tyrannosaurus rex in your committee room and keep the velociraptors out ofthe annual meeting.
28 Introducing the CHIA “California Standards for Healthcare Interpreters”By Elizabeth Anh-Dao NguyenComprehensive and professional healthcare interpreter training is essential in order toput into practice the techniques and strategies for effectively carrying out the ethicalprinciples, as well as the protocols and different roles, of healthcare interpreters.
31 Interpreting for the Entertainment Industry: Tips for Those Who Do Want toWork in This Town AgainBy Nancy GilmourWhat are the different venues requiring interpreting in the film/TV world, and whatmakes the simultaneous mode so indispensable? How do we develop glossaries and jobleads and work with stars claiming a certain expertise in the director’s language?
34 What About Function(s) in Bible Translation?By Christiane NordBased on a paper read at the conference of the European Society of Translation Studiesin Copenhagen in 2001, this article tries to show how, and where, a functional approachcan be useful in the translation of biblical texts.
39 Summary of ATA’s Translation and Interpreting Compensation SurveyBy Shawn SixATA’s Translation and Interpreting Compensation Survey should prove to be an invalu-able benchmarking tool for nearly everyone in or affiliated with the translation andinterpreting profession.
The ATA Chronicle (ISSN1078-6457) is publishedmonthly, except bi-monthlyin November/December,by the AmericanTranslators Association.
Reprint Permission:
Requests for permission toreprint articles should besent to the Chronicle editorat [email protected].
The subscription rate for a member is $43 (included inthe dues payment). The U.S.subscription rate for a non-member is $50. Subscribersin Canada and Mexico add$25; all other non-U.S. sub-scribers add $45. Singlecopies are available for $5per issue. Second-classPostage rates paid atAlexandria, Virginia, andadditional mailing offices.
Postmaster:
Changes of addressshould be sent to The ATAChronicle, 225 ReinekersLane, Suite 590,Alexandria, VA 22314. TheAmerican TranslatorsAssociation (ATA) wasestablished in 1959 as anot-for-profit professionalsociety to advance thestandards of translationand to promote the intel-lectual and material inter-ests of translators andinterpreters in the UnitedStates. The statementsmade in The ATAChronicle do not neces-sarily reflect the opinionor judgment of the ATA,its editor, or its officers ordirectors and are strictlythose of the authors.
Display Advertising Index
13 Clear Sonic Manufacturingwww.clearsonic.com
9 New York Universitywww.nyu.edu
63 TRADOS Corporationwww.trados.com
Proposed ATA Middle Eastern Languages Division
During ATA’s 43rd Annual Conference in Atlanta, a group of attendees met to discuss
the establishment of a new ATA division, the Middle Eastern Languages Division
(MELD). As its acronym suggests, MELD will be designed to serve as a nonpolitical
forum that welcomes participation from all translators and interpreters working in the
languages of this region. For more information or to volunteer with this effort, please
contact Haleh Vakhshori, MELD coordinator, at [email protected].
It pays ...to keep your listings updated inATA’s online Directory of Translation and Interpreting Services and Directory of Language ServicesCompanies
(www.atanet.org)
The ATA Chronicle | March 20036
About Our Authors... Renato Beninatto is apartner at Common SenseAdvisory, Inc., a businessresearch and sales con-sulting company. He hasserved on the executive
teams for some of the industry’s mostprominent companies, most recently as vice-president and director of Alpnet Inc. andBerlitz GlobalNET, respectively. He is amember and advisor for the LocalisationIndustry Standards Association (LISA), andhas served on its Executive Committee. Hewas a founding member of SINTRA, theBrazilian Translator’s Association. He hasmade presentations and keynote speeches atevents organized by LISA, the InternationalQuality and Productivity Center, the NewYork New Media Association, the New YorkSoftware Industry Association, the Institute ofInternational Research, and the Software andInformation Industry Association. Contact:[email protected].
Nancy Gilmour moved toL.A. after a stint in thediplomatic corps as consulat the American Embassyin Rome. She is a court-approved interpreter, State
Department-accredited conference inter-preter, ATA-accredited translator (Italian &French→English), and professional actor(Screen Actors Guild/The American Feder-ation of Television and Radio Artists). Shedubbed Faye Dunaway’s role in Don Juan deMarco into Italian and French, in addition toacting in soaps, various TV series, and onthe stage. She has also done narrations forindustrial, educational, and training videos.Contact [email protected].
Dr. Barton Goldsmith is an international speaker,author, and consultantwho is considered anexpert on leadership. He isa contributing author to
numerous books and publications, includingThe Los Angeles Business Journal. Contact:www.bartongoldsmith.com.
Ann G. Macfarlane is theimmediate ATA past presi-dent (1999-2001), and nowserves as chair of ATA’sNominating Committee andSpecial Projects Com-
mittee. She is also the executive director ofthe National Association of JudiciaryInterpreters and Translators. She runs herown home-based language services com-pany in Seattle, Washington, RussianResources International, and trains non-profit boards in parliamentary procedure,budgeting, and meeting management.She is an ATA-accredited (Russian→
English) freelance translator, and holdscertificates from the U.S. Army RussianInstitute and the University ofWashington (nonprofit management).Contact: [email protected].
Elizabeth Nguyen is a cultural and lin-guistic specialist focusing on curriculadevelopment and training at the L.A. CareHealth Plan in Los Angeles, California. Sheformerly served on the board of theCalifornia Healthcare Interpreters Associ-ation (CHIA), and was co-chair of CHIA’sStandards and Certification Committee,which was entrusted with the creation ofthe “California Standards of Practice forHealthcare Interpreters.” Born and raisedin Saigon, Vietnam, she received Frenchschooling and holds a baccalauréat degreein philosophy and literature, as well as adegree in linguistic arts. Her work experi-ence includes the development of inter-preter training and cultural sensitivitytraining curricula, healthcare interpreterand provider training, Vietnamese andFrench interpreting, as well as the transla-tion and review of documents related to thefields of healthcare and social services.Contact: [email protected].
Christiane Nord graduated as a translatorfor Spanish and English from HeidelbergUniversity, and holds a Ph.D. in Romancelanguage and literature (Spanish andPortuguese). She has been involved intranslator training for more than 35
years. Her research focuses on functionaltranslation theory, methodology, and pedagogy. Contact: [email protected].
Shawn Six is the head of theCompensation and Benefits Survey divi-sion at Industry Insights, Inc. Contact:[email protected].
Adrian P. Spidle, Jr., who, together withhis wife Cynthia, founded AdaptiveLanguage Resources, Inc. 10 years ago,was educated in the public schools of NewYork City and studied materials science atthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology.He is a Vietnam-era, seagoing veteran ofthe U.S. Navy, and lives with his wife andeight-year-old daughter Barbara in a tinyBoston suburb—but much too far from hisson and grandson in West Virginia.Contact: [email protected].
Laraine Tunick is an analyst at AlliedBusiness Intelligence Inc., a New York-based technology research think tank thatpublishes research and technology intelli-gence on the wireless, broadband, elec-tronics, networking, and energy industries.Contact: [email protected].
Jost Zetzsche is an ATA-accredited(English→German) translator and a localiza-tion and translation consultant. A native ofHamburg, Germany, he earned a Ph.D. inthe field of Chinese translation history andlinguistics in 1996. He began working inlocalization and technical translation in1997, and co-founded InternationalWriters’ Group in Winchester Bay, Oregon(www.internationalwriters.com) in 1999. Atthe beginning of 2003, he published a com-puter guide for translators, A Translator’sTool Box for the 21st Century. Contact: [email protected].
You may renew online in the Members Only section of the ATA website: atanet.org/membersonly
If you have not received your membership notice, please contact Maggie Rowe at [email protected]
or 703.683.6100. Don’t miss a day of your benefits! Thank you for supporting ATA.
Renew your ATA membership today!
Visit atanet.org today!
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 7
From the PresidentYour ATA Membership Updated
Thomas L. West [email protected]
By now, you have renewed yourATA membership for 2003. InFebruary 2002, I wrote about why
you should renew your ATA member-ship. In this column, I want to reinforceyour decision to renew by updating youon some of the benefits of membership.
First, thank you for renewing. 2002was another record year for ATA, with8,984 members. ATA would not be thethriving organization it is todaywithout all the good work of so manymembers who have volunteered theirtime and energy over the years.
Here’s an update on some of thebenefits of ATA membership.
Online directories. ATA’s onlinesearchable directories continue toprovide great exposure for individ-uals and companies alike. Last year,the section of ATA’s website dedi-cated to the online directories—Directory of Translation andInterpreting Services and theDirectory of Language Services Com-panies—had over 1.74 million hitsand 78,000 distinct visitors! Thepotential of gaining a new client ismore than worth our modest duespayment. Remember, only currentATA members may be listed in thedirectories. More specifically, onlyindividual, non-student members maybe included in the Directory of Trans-lation and Interpreting Services andcorporate members in the Directoryof Language Services Companies. Besure to keep your information updated.If you do not have a listing, you cancomplete the questionnaire online atwww.american translators.org/tsd/ for individuals and www.americantranslators/ tsd_corp/ for companies.
Networking. Aside from the tech-nical aspects of our profession—
language combinations and areas ofspecialization—this business is allabout networking. We learn from eachother, and we get work from eachother. From the Annual Conference tothe regional professional developmentseminars and chapter events, ATAoffers you many opportunities to net-work with you colleagues. In addition,many members network remotelythrough division listserv discussionsand articles in the ATA Chronicle andchapter and local group newsletters.We are fortunate that ATA membersare very generous and supportive ofhelping each other out.
Professional development opportu-nities. One of the primary goals of theassociation is to foster professionaldevelopment. ATA offers a variety ofprograms. The Annual Conferencecontinues to be the largest and mostvisible one. We expect over 1,200people to attend the profession’s pre-mier educational opportunity: ATA’s44th Annual Conference in Phoenix,Arizona, November 5-8, 2003. Inaddition, we have the Legal Trans-lation Conference set for Jersey City,New Jersey, May 2-4, 2003. Be sureto register for this in-depth, special-ized event now. (Please seewww.atanet.org for more informa-tion.) Finally, we have three one-dayprofessional development seminarplanned for this year. The Translationand Interpreting for the EntertainmentIndustry Seminar, held in Los Angeleslast January, drew 147 participants.The Medical Translation and Inter-preting Seminar is scheduled forMiami at the end of this month, andwe are finalizing plans for a localiza-tion seminar in Texas in the fall.Finally, ATA’s divisions—includingthe new Medical Division [being
established]—provide practical, infor-mative newsletters and specializedtraining. To date, the PortugueseLanguage, Spanish Language, andTranslation Company Divisions areoffering their own mini-conferencesthis year. For all these events, ATAmembers receive reduced registrationrates.
ATA membership saves you money.As for true dollars-and-cents savings,ATA members receive significant dis-counts on professional liability insur-ance, collections services, and, mostrecently, customized website designservices to help members. Membersalso receive discounts on some typesof insurance and overnight andexpress package shipping services.
Doing something for the profession.By supporting ATA, you are sup-porting our efforts to promote thetranslation and interpreting profes-sions. We are expanding our publicrelations activities. We continue to getmedia inquiries from the Translationand Terrorism Forum held at the ATAAnnual Conference in Atlanta lastNovember!
Thank you again for renewingyour ATA membership and congratu-lations on making the right move toimprove yourself and your businessthrough the many avenues availableto you as a member of the AmericanTranslators Association.
Legal TranslationConference
Legal TranslationConference
See page 57 for details and registration form.
The ATA Chronicle | March 20038
From the Executive DirectorOdds and Ends
C heck your membership informa-tion. Be sure to check yourmembership confirmation letter,
which was mailed to you earlier thismonth. This information reflects whatwe have in our database records foryou, which is the basis for the infor-mation we include in the MembershipDirectory. Please return any changesto ATA Headquarters as directed inthe letter. This is also a good time toreview your listing(s) in the onlineDirectory of Translation andInterpreting Services and theDirectory of Language ServicesCompanies. These listings are com-pletely optional and there is no chargeto be included. The listings are onlyavailable to current ATA members.
Legal Translation Conference.ATA’s Legal Translation Conference,Jersey City, New Jersey, May 2-4,2003 is taking shape. Please checkwww.atanet.org/legal for the most upto date schedule and related informa-tion. Be sure to register today.
ATA Annual Conference. Speaking ofconferences, it is not too early to planfor ATA’s 44th Annual Conference,Phoenix, Arizona, November 5-8,2003. The overall format will be thesame, with the preconference semi-nars and Welcome Reception onWednesday (November 5). The finalday of educational sessions and theClosing Banquet and Party round outthe conference activities on Saturday(November 8). To help you budget forthe meeting, the conference registra-tion fees will remain unchanged forthis year. The hotel rates are locked inat the Pointe South Mountain Resortat $155 per night, single/double plustax. Finally, many airfares are at his-torically bargain rates.
Medical Insurance. I just receivednotice that ATA partner Mutual ofOmaha will no longer be offeringmajor medical insurance. MoO willcontinue to offer other types of insur-ance. Thank you for understandingthat this issue is much bigger thanATA. These medical insurance
programs are highly regulated byeach state, which has made offering anational program that much more dif-ficult. In the meantime, I am moni-toring pending legislation inCongress for “Association HealthPlans.” In its current form, this pro-posed bill would facilitate associa-tions in offering medical insurance totheir members. I will continue toinvestigate what is available.
Welcome Regina. I would like towelcome Regina Tocci as ATA’snewest employee. Regina’s title isaccreditation assistant. She will workwith Terry Hanlen, deputy executivedirector and accreditation programmanager. The much-need clericalsupport will be of particular valuewith the introduction of the signifi-cant changes to the accreditation pro-gram for the 2003-2004 accreditationyear. Her background includesstudies in Italy and experience indatabase management.
Walter Bacak, [email protected]
Proposals are invited on topics in all areas of translation and interpreting, including the following:
Agencies, Bureaus, and Companies; Financial Translation and Interpreting; Independent Contractors; Interpreting;Language-Specific Sessions; Legal Translation and Interpreting; Literary; Medical Translation and Interpreting;Scientific and Technology; Social Sciences; Terminology; Training and Pedagogy; Translators and Computers.
Suggestions for additional topics are welcome. Proposals for sessions must be submitted on the ConferencePresentation Proposal Form to: Conference Organizer, ATA Headquarters, 225 Reinekers Lane, Suite 590, Alexandria,VA 22314; Fax: (703) 683-6122. All proposals for sessions must be in English.
There’s no time like the present! Download a Conference Presentation Proposal Form at www.atanet.org/abstract.htm.
Call for Papers44th Annual Conference of the American Translators AssociationPhoenix, Arizona • Pointe South Mountain Resort • November 5-8, 2003
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Today’s ever-shrinking “global village” calls for professional translators. As a response to this need, NYU’s School ofContinuing and Professional Studies is proud to offer a Master of Science in Translation.
The program focuses on superior linguistic competence, speed, and accuracy in translation and terminology, in two rapidlyevolving international fields – finance and law. Designed especially for translation professionals, the program is offeredonline, except for the last term, which is completed on the NYU campus.
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The ATA Chronicle | March 200310
American Foundation for Translation and Interpretation
JTG Scholarship in Scientific and TechnicalTranslation or InterpretationDescription of Award
This is a $2,500 nonrenewable schol-arship for the 2003-2004 academic yearfor students enrolled or planning to enrollin a degree program in scientific and tech-nical translation or in interpreter training.
Eligibility1. Applicants must be graduate or under-
graduate students enrolled or planningto enroll in a program leading to adegree in scientific and technicaltranslation or in interpretation at anaccredited U.S. college or university.
2. Applicants must be full-time studentswho have completed at least one yearof college or university studies.
3. Generally, an applicant should presenta minimum GPA of 3.00 overall and a3.50 in translation- and interpretation-related courses.
4. Applicants should have at least one yearof study remaining in their program;however, in certain circumstances, oneresidual semester may be accepted.
5. Applicants must be U.S. citizens.
Selection Criteria1. Demonstrated achievement in transla-
tion and interpretation.2. Academic record.3. Three letters of recommendation by fac-
ulty or nonacademic supervisor.4. A 300-500-word essay outlining the
applicant’s interests and goals as theyrelate to the field of translation orinterpretation.
Application Process1. Application forms may be obtained by
contacting the American TranslatorsAssociation by mail at 225 ReinekersLane, Suite 590, Alexandria, VA 22314.
2. Completed applications must bereceived by AFTI by May 1, 2003.
3. A completed application consists of:a) Application cover sheet;b) Three letters of recommendation in a
sealed envelope with recommender’ssignature over the envelope flap;
c) An essay; andd) A copy of the applicant’s academic
record with a copy of the major/minoror other program form or a depart-mental statement of admission to thetranslation or interpretation program.
AwardA national award committee will
announce the name of the scholarshipaward winner by the end of June 2003. Thecommittee’s decision is final. Disburse-ment of award will occur at the beginningof the 2003 fall semester.
Conferences and EventsWashington, DCTranslators Discussion Group Borders Books and Music18th & L Streets, NWMeets the second Wednesday of eachmonth from 6:30-8:00 pm at Borders. Formore information, please contact Bordersat (202) 466-2152.
Weston, MassachusettsNew England Translators Association 7th Annual Conference & ExhibitionHenderson House, Northeastern UniversityMay 3, 2003This annual event provides a forum fortranslators, interpreters, localizationagencies, publishers, and other language-related organizations. Keynotespeaker Ellen Elias-Bursac will discuss“The Wartime Service of Translation.” Formore information and a registration form,see http://netaweb.org/fair03.htm orcontact Judy Lyons [email protected].
Dublin, Ireland14th International Japanese/EnglishTranslation Conference: IJET-14 May 17-18, 2003The 14th annual IJET conference in Dublinwill mark the first time that IJET has met inIreland, and promises to provide an excitingand charming experience for all attendees.This venue was proposed in the hopes ofnot only providing a thoroughly enjoyableconference, but also to expand the horizonsof IJET attendees. Just as translations serveto bring Japanese- and English-speakingcultures closer together, IJET conferencesprovide an opportunity for first hand expo-sure to the languages and cultures. It ishoped that IJET-14 will be a learning experi-ence, as well as a good time, for all partici-pants. More information will be availablesoon at http://ijet.org/ijet-14/.
Dallas, TexasSociety for Technical Communication 50th Annual ConferenceMay 18-21, 2003For technical writers, usability specialists,web designers, and others involved in tech-nical communication. Seminar topics
include manual production, online helpdesign, and the internationalization of com-munication products. Visit www.stc.org.
Halifax, Nova ScotiaCanadian Association for Translation Studies16th Annual ConferenceTheme: “Translation and Globalization”May 29-31, 2003Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova ScotiaInformation: Dr. Louise Brunette (organi-zer): [email protected];Marc Charron: [email protected];Anne Malena: [email protected];Marco Fiola: [email protected];Dr. Anne Malena (Program Committee Chair)Modern Languages & Cultural Studies200 Arts Building • University of AlbertaEdmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E6. E-mail: [email protected]; Tel: (780) 492-1187; Fax: (780) 492-2106. www.uottawa.ca/associations/act-cats/.
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 11
I n the previous issue, we com-pleted our review of NorthAmerican certification programs
outside of the U.S. by looking at therather complex situation in Mexico.The Canadian programs were cov-ered last year in the January andMarch issues. In an attempt to com-plete the coverage of South Americaas well, I sent out queries to transla-tors and interpreters in Chile,Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru,Uruguay, and Venezuela to comple-ment the information presented inthe July 2001 and June 2002columns on Brazil and Argentina. Ireceived a wealth of informationfrom some countries, and very littleor no response from others. There-fore, the information below is notnecessarily well balanced, but itoffers a sufficient glimpse into theT&I profession in South America.
I would like to extend specialthanks to the following contributors:
• Edgar A. Moros([email protected]),professor of translation at theUniversidad de Los Andes, ATAmember;
• Mariana Irisarri([email protected]),public translator, notary public,ATA member;
• Professor Roberto Puig([email protected]), Fellowof the Institute of Linguists(London), professor of Englishtranslation at the State Universityin Montevideo;
• Soledad Martinez([email protected]); and
• Anthony Letts([email protected]), Fellowof the Institute of Linguists(London), ATA member.
Just as in North America, the certifi-cation of translators and interpretersis handled differently in each country.Some countries have a sophisticatedcertification process and a wide selec-tion of university courses in T&I,while others do not. We will now lookat the situation in Colombia,Uruguay, and Venezuela, three SouthAmerican countries with state-runsystems of certification.
ColombiaTranslators and interpreters have
been certified by Colombian govern-ment regulation as “judiciary experts,”along with accountants, jewelers,mechanics, and 15 other professionssince 1951. Reportedly, some 5,500translators have been certified to-date,99% of them living in Bogotá. Like inMexico, there are many indigenouslanguages in Colombia1, most of themmade “official” in the 1991Constitution. However, most of theselanguages lack written form, and theColombian justice system does notprovide for judiciary experts in lan-guages other than Spanish.
The certification of translators andinterpreters was first handled by aspecial institute that was simultane-ously responsible for preparing can-didates for qualification (IEI). After aseries of irregularities were reported,certification was passed, in 1998, tothe State Universidad NacionalModern Languages Department in an
attempt to fight corruption and to adda measure of academic judgment.
The administration of the roll oftranslators was in the hands of theMinistry of Justice until 1999, whenit passed to the Ministry of ForeignAffairs. Meanwhile, the system offees for judiciary experts, first estab-lished by the Act of 1951 and lastamended by the Act of 1969, is nowin the hands of the Judiciary’sDisciplinary Council. In August2002, the Council announced that thelegislation concerning the fees stillneeds further revision, as the remu-neration of translators specified in theAct is not being observed. As aninteresting side note, similar legisla-tion in Peru, the Supreme Decree33/92, rules that while “official”translators work in a free market,they will provide translation to theForeign Ministry free of charge.
Currently, candidates for certifica-tion are examined by the aforemen-tioned university department. As aneligibility requirement, which is notstipulated in the Act but ratherimposed by the university, a universitydegree is required, but no experienceis needed. The examination requirescandidates to pass a four-module testconsisting of about 200 words of textto be translated in each direction in 3hours, and about 20 minutes of inter-pretation in each direction. In order topass the test at the UniversidadNacional, candidates need to score90%, up from 60%, with all four mod-ules carrying equal weight. Conse-quently, the pass rate has dropped andfewer candidates earn the credential(currently 10% to 20%).
Other eligibility requirementsinclude:
• Moral integrity, certified before anotary by three independent wit-nesses.
International Certification Study: South America RevisitedBy Jiri Stejskal
“…Just as in NorthAmerica, the certification
of translators andinterpreters is handled
differently in eachcountry…”
➡
The ATA Chronicle | March 200312
International Certification Study: South America Revisited Continued
• Proof of the right to earn incomein Colombia. (It is not necessaryto be a Colombian national.)
• Submission of an application forspecific language pair(s).
The examination schedule onlyallows one examination to be taken ata time, and examinations are offeredonly in Bogotá in June and Decembereach year. If the candidate fails, theexamination can be taken again anynumber of times. There are no contin-uing education requirements, and nore-examinations.
There are several T&I organiza-tions in Colombia. The ColegioColombiano de Traductores (CCT)was founded a little more than adecade ago with the support of theColombian Foreign Ministry, theBritish Council, the AllianceFrançaise, the Goethe Institut, and fivemajor universities in Bogotá. TheColegio has about 70 members and itspurpose is to serve as a meeting placeand contact point for translators,offering a regular schedule of aca-demic and social events. TheAsociacion Colombiana de Traduc-tores e Intérpretes (ACTI) was estab-lished in 1997 and reportedly has lessthan 10 active members. It has anadmission examination for documenttranslation into Spanish only.
Individual members of the CCTand the ACTI have been involved inthe state certification process, com-plementing the team of linguists atthe Universidad Nacional. TheColegio does not certify, sinceColombian law (Decree 382/51,Decree 2275/51, Decree 2265/69,and the Civil Code) would neces-sarily implicate it in any civil or crim-inal liability case, or require it to actas arbitrator, and there is no adminis-trative, academic, or financial struc-ture to support such a position.
There are many academic pro-grams for translators and interpretersin Colombia, in addition to a dozen orso undergraduate programs thatinclude translation as a language-learning tool. Of the 12 academicinstitutions offering graduate diplomacourses for translation listed below, 8are in Bogotá and 4 are in theprovinces. The offerings range from100 to 300 hours of class sessions.Reportedly, none of the courses havecomputer facilities, and the studentmix is such that the programs cannotassume that each student has accessto a computer. At present, none ofthese courses are designed as trainingtools for professional translators.
Among the universities offeringgraduate courses in translation are:
• Colegio Universidad de NuestraSeñora el Rosario: three semestersof technical modules in economics,law, literature, and translation theory(all into Spanish since 1994);
• Universidad Nacional, Bogotá:three semesters of workshops (lin-guistics and theory are the strongareas) for translating into English(since 1999);
• Universidad de Antioquia, Mede-llin: three semesters of terminologyand linguistics;
• Universidad del Valle: has net-work for terminology with theUniversidad de Antioquia and theUniversidad del Cauca;
• Universidad de Pamplona, Pam-plona: two semesters, mainly forEnglish teachers (now held up bylack of government funding);
• Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano,Bogotá and Cartagena: twosemesters (a program for Englishteachers);
• Universidad del Quindio: has arelationship with the University ofPuerto Rico;
• Universidad del Cauca: workingon a terminology network with theUniversidad de Antioquia and theUniversidad del Valle;
• Universidad IDEAS;• Escuela de Administración de
Negocios (EAN): 100-hour diplomaprogram based on business needsfor English document writing;
• Instituto Caro y Cuervo: freecourses in classical Latin andGreek for translation; and
• Universidad de La Sabana:weekly three-hour internal coursesin classical Latin translation forteaching staff (mainly used by thelaw faculty).
Apparently, there are no graduatecourses available for interpreters inColombia at any level. TheUniversidad Nacional has offeredsome theory on the subject, but has noequipment to make a practical appli-cation of the theory.2
UruguayIn Uruguay, translators become
sworn translators (“traductorespúblicos”) upon completion of a four-year course at the Law School of theState University in Montevideo. Thecredential is currently available forEnglish, French, Portuguese, Italian,and German. For other languages, theappropriate embassy certifies thecompetence of experts in the foreignlanguage concerned, with translationsbeing signed jointly by an expert anda sworn translator who have gradu-ated from the university. Anotheroption for candidates who are inter-ested in acting as experts in foreignlanguages (except for the five lan-guages mentioned above) is to applyto the Colegio de TraductoresPúblicos del Uruguay, attaching docu-mentation in support of their applica-tion. After review of such documents
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 13
and an interview with the candidate,the Colegio decides whether or not toapprove the candidate’s inclusion inthe list of language experts (“idó-neos”). These experts are called tohelp translators, whenever needed,with the translation of languages forwhich there is no sworn translatoravailable. Translations are then signedjointly. There is no official certifica-tion for interpreters in Uruguay.Uruguayan professional translatorsreceive training mainly in legal trans-lation, since areas such as literary ortechnical translation are not fully cov-ered at the university. Translators spe-cialize in their areas of choice aftercompleting their university studies.
In order to be eligible for thestudies, candidates must have finishedhigh school and have passed anentrance examination in English,French, Italian, Portuguese, orGerman (in addition to Spanish), bothwritten and oral. A level of proficiencysimilar to that of a native speaker isrequired. It is of interest that thisexamination is an exception in theeducational system of Uruguay,because student applicants normallyenroll for university studies after com-pleting high school without having topass any entrance examination.
This credential was duly recog-nized in Uruguay at the end of the19th century. The law school regula-tions of 1885 stated that the degreewas to be granted by said school.Later on, sundry regulations andadministrative provisions organizedcourses and examinations, but in1915 students were transferred to theEscuela Superior de Comercio. Thus,the degree was no longer a universitydegree, but merely a professionaldegree. The next stage began in 1932,when courses were taken again at theuniversity, not at the law school, butat the School of Economy and
Administration. The degree, however,was still merely a professional certifi-cate. In real life, the courses provedunsuccessful on account of their syn-thetic and impractical character.Finally, the authorities organized reg-ular courses at the law school. A newthree-year plan was put in practice in1976 at the school, where ProfessorPuig still teaches language and legaltranslation. A few years later, anotheryear of study was added. The degreeis once again on a par with that oflawyers, notaries, architects, etc.
As was noted above, law schoolgraduates become “sworn” or“public” translators, rather than lit-erary or scientific translators. Theschool’s objective is to train transla-tors for official purposes and work,and therefore their studies arefocused on the letters and the law.Interpretation is currently not offeredas an independent program, but it iscovered to some degree in theschool’s curriculum (court consecu-tive interpretation, for instance).
The level of the T&I professionhas been duly noticed at the UnitedNations and in Europe; reportedly, itis among the highest in LatinAmerica. The Uruguayan Associationof Public Translators (Colegio deTraductores Públicos del Uruguay) iswell known abroad thanks to itsjournal, the Revista del Colegio deTraductores Públicos del Uruguay,founded and edited for 11 years byProfessor Puig. However, the publi-cation was recently discontinued. TheColegio was the first Latin-Americanmember of the InternationalFederation of Translators (FIT), andthe third in the Americas, after theU.S. and Canada. It was founded in1950 on the basis of a previous asso-ciation founded in 1932, and cur-rently has about 300 members. Theweb address of the Colegio is
www.colegiotraductores.org.uy. Thereis also an interpreters association,Colegio de Intérpretes de Conferenciadel Uruguay (CICU), founded in1986, that has 16 members. Sincethere is no training in Uruguay forinterpreters, CICU requires profes-sional practice (100 days of actualinterpretation work) or a proven skillin the field (to be evaluated by twomembers) for admittance.
VenezuelaCertification in Venezuela is han-
dled by the National Government atthe Ministry of Justice. Certified trans-lators are called “intérprete público.”Similar to Spain, a translator is certi-fied as an “intérprete,” even ➡
The ATA Chronicle | March 200314
International Certification Study: South America Revisited Continued
though the certification examinationfocuses on translation rather thaninterpretation skills. Reportedly,anyone can take the exam, which con-sists of a written test and an oral inter-view. A degree in translation is notrequired and there is no continuingeducation requirement or recertifica-tion process.
There are currently two universi-ties in Venezuela with a translationprogram. The Universidad Central deVenezuela (UCV) in Caracas has atranslator and interpreter training pro-gram, offering a Licenciatura (bach-elor degree equivalent) in translation,interpreting, or a combination thereof.This program is reportedly very thor-ough. All students must take two for-eign languages. The second universityis the Universidad de Los Andes(ULA) in Mérida, which offers adegree in modern languages with amajor in translation. In the translationprogram, five courses are taught:Documentation and Terminology;Translation I (General Texts); Trans-lation II (Sci-Tech-Med); TranslationIII (Legal and Commercial); andTranslation IV (Literary). Students alsotake two foreign languages (currentlyEnglish, French, Italian, and Germanare offered). As a final requirement,students must do an internship at acompany, government agency, ortranslation bureau. Finding a placefor the students to do their internship
is challenging, says Professor Moros,who teaches at this university. Somestudents are sent to the U.S. andEurope, but most of them stay inVenezuela. The university is planningto develop a master’s degree programin translation. There is a third univer-sity, the Universidad Metropolitana,which offers a minor in translation inthe modern languages program.
Venezuelan translators and inter-preters are organized in CONALTI(Colegio Nacional de Traductores eIntérpretes), also a member of FIT,which was founded on July 29, 1980.All members of the association areeither graduates of the School ofModern Languages of the CentralUniversity of Venezuela or translatorsand interpreters with many years ofexperience in the field. Several mem-bers are certified public interpreters,qualified by the Ministry of Justice totranslate documents to be filed atgovernment offices or to act in court.Further information on the Colegio isavailable at www.conalti.org.
Chile and PeruIn Chile, translators and inter-
preters can join the AsociaciónGremial de Traductores de Santiago, amember of FIT. Pontificia Univer-sidad Católica de Chile offers a four-year program for translators focusingon English, French, and German. InPeru, the Asociación de Traductores
Profesionales del Perú, also a FITmember, serves the needs of localtranslators and interpreters. Programsfor translators and interpreters areavailable at the Universidad Femeninadel Sagrado Corazón (UNIFE). Thelanguages offered are English andFrench, and the students can achievethe degree of “Bachiller en Traduccióne Interpretación” or “Licenciada enTraducción e Interpretación.”
In the next issue, we will examinethe credentialing processes in theNetherlands and Belgium. As theeditor of this series, I encouragereaders to submit any relevant infor-mation concerning non-U.S. certifi-cation or similar programs, as well ascomments on the information pub-lished in this series, to my e-mailaddress at [email protected].
Notes:1. About a half million Colombians
use 1 of the approximately 80indigenous languages as theirnative tongue. For more informa-tion, see www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=Colombia.
2. The information on Colombia wassupplied by Anthony Letts,Roberto Pizarro, and MavisGarcía. Mr. Letts compiled theresults of their discussion.
ATA’s Portuguese Language Division 9th Annual Spring MeetingRoney Palace Resort
Miami, FloridaApril 25-26
Watch for details and registrationonline and by e-mail!
www.ata-divisions.org/PLD/index.htm
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 15
D o you really know your cus-tomers and prospects? Canyou clearly describe with cer-
tainty the priorities your clients havein mind as they decide which serviceprovider to engage? When I was vice-president of sales on the localizationsupplier side, these questions weretop of mind. To get answers, I com-missioned my staff to conduct studiesof our buyers’ opinions of the com-pany and its performance. Thiswas—in my mind—the only way wecould collect information, but unfor-tunately this approach provided littleinsight. We had to discount a largeportion of the results because, truth-fully, no customer would really tell asupplier the whole truth unless hewas really upset. Nonetheless, wewanted to know not only what theythought about us, but to find out moreabout their plans (i.e., what theyplanned to do the next three years,whether they were going to outsourcemore work or bring it in-house, etc.).What we really wanted was to be afly on the wall at their planning andoperational meetings.
Introduction to Research and How itWill Help Sell Your Services
In searching for relevant informa-tion about our clients and theirbehaviors, we kept finding the samething time and again. We could pay tohave formal custom studies done our-selves, which would be expensiveand time consuming, or we couldlook to reports from large researchfirms on localization. This researchhad its own problems. It was infre-quent and vendor-focused to the pointof being little more than a regurgita-tion of what the vendors had told ayoung research assistant (and I reallyresented it when my company wasn’tmentioned). With these challenges,a need in this market segment
emerged—to provide newsy andcomprehensive research that actuallyanswers the questions translation andlocalization service providers haveabout their industry with real profilesof their customers. In answer to thiscall, companies like Common SenseAdvisory, Inc. used the following cri-teria when developing marketingresearch to be offered to the localiza-tion industry:
• Independence. No firm shouldpay to have research written.There should be no slant or bias.
• Buyer-focused. Reporting andanalyzing what buyers say,focusing on buyers’ activities,plans, and priorities. Reporting onreal people doing real jobs acrossindustries and sectors—not onlythe usual suspects or peoplehighly active in localization stan-dards committees.
• Interpretive. Information aboutwhere the market is going versusreporting the status quo. Thatmeans you can look ahead to whatwill happen rather than hear aboutwhere things were or are now.
While this type of analysis is targetedat practitioners and business decisionmakers, translators, especially trans-lation agencies, can also learn a lotabout how prospects and buyersthink. Armed with this information,suppliers will understand where
buyers, and not just their own, standon major issues, and can apply thisinsight to their own planning anddaily operations.
Develop a Winning Sales Strategywith Research
As a sales and marketing execu-tive in a translation services or tech-nology company, you are the first“user” of research. You can employits findings in many ways, but the twomost critical are in understandingcustomer needs and measuring theeffectiveness of your current salesstrategy in meeting those needs. Readthe reports, compare it to your cur-rent sales strategy, and ask yourselfthe following questions:
Does our company address the realissues that our clients and prospectshave?Many companies have gotten mired inthe translation cents-per-word debate.Does your client really worry aboutthese things?
Does our company ask the right ques-tions when prospecting?
Your prospects may be looking fora more comprehensive end-to-endsolution than what you currently offer.Are you missing the buying signals?
Is our company selling to the rightaudience?
The research can tell you if itreally makes sense to spend a lot oftime and energy trying to secure ameeting with the vice-president,COO, or CEO to pitch your com-pany’s services.
Can our company give meaningfulnew insights to prospects about theirown business?
Your prospects want to communi-cate their messages to world
“…You will find that themore you use it, the morevalue research will hold
for you…”
How to Use Research in Sales
By Renato Beninatto
➡
The ATA Chronicle | March 200316
markets. Can you offer them additionalvalue in this more evolved applicationof your services or technology?
Can your company adapt its serviceofferings to tackle some of theresearch findings?
Since many buyers see little differ-ence among suppliers, it’s essentialfor you to figure out what makes youdifferent from the agency down thestreet. Do any of your core compe-tencies address the market dynamicslaid out in the report?
Further, be sure to spread theword. Many times people buy marketresearch, read it, push the ideas laidout in the reports for a short time, andthen lock it away in their file cabi-nets, never to be revisited. Whilethose in the inner circle may havebenefited from the research, theiremployees received nowhere near thevalue that they could have had fromthe information had it been morewidely available.
Use Research to Drive Discussionabout Industry Needs and Trends
Everybody in your company hasthe same mission: to acquire or retainclients. As such, project managers,engineers, support staff, and othersare just as involved in that process asthe sales staff. Ultimately, your com-pany as a whole needs to offer cus-tomers more value than yourcompetitors. If used wisely, researchcan provide the tools to differentiateyour company from the competitionto attract discerning customers andprospects. You probably have aweekly or semi-monthly staffmeeting by phone, webcast, or inperson. One idea is to fold the rele-vance of your research findings intothose meetings. Here’s one approachyou might take:
1. Distribute the research report toyour team. Tell them not to copyor share the report with anybody.This is valuable, confidential, andcopyrighted information that youpaid good money for. You don’twant competitors that didn’t payfor the insight to benefit fromyour investment.
2. Ask them to read the full report,paying particular attention to buyerbehavior, the analysis of what thisbehavior means, and how it willaffect market dynamics. Becausethe reports may be long, makesure you allow enough lead-timefor your team to read the material.You don’t want folks readinginstead of working!
3. Before the meeting, assign eachparticipant a section of the reportto read. Ask each to make a five-minute presentation to the groupon the assigned section, focusingon coming up with answers to thefollowing questions:
• What did this section cover?
• How does it apply to ourclients? Ask each team memberto think about their patch morestructurally, paying particularattention to how the dynamicsdiscussed in their section mightapply differently based on themarket segment, size, and orga-nizational model of their clients.
• How does it apply to our salesstrategy? Get team membersthinking about how they can usethe information from the report tooffer more value to their prospects.
• Was this news or already commonknowledge for you? You’ll find
that some team members are farmore intuitive than others, sothey might have already spottedsome of the trends outlined inthe report. If this is the case, askthem to share with the rest ofthe team their best practices forlooking over the horizon to seewhat’s next.
4. Share your conclusions. If youlead a sales team or company, yourstaff looks to you for guidance, solet them know your biggest take-aways from the research. How youinternalize the report and intend touse it in setting a direction will bea critical part of what your staffdoes with any research findings.
5. Make research a regular part of everymeeting. Everyone in sales shouldbe in constant discovery mode.Regardless of where they do theirresearch, you should encourage yoursales representatives to share theirdiscoveries with their colleagues.
Recruit and Train with InsightYou can attract new professionals
by providing them with industryinsight. Through my own experience,I have identified excellent salespeople,executives, and project managers inother sectors, but they were skepticalabout the translation industry andwere afraid to jump the fence. I foundout that the uncertainty was based onthe lack of information about this typeof business. The few sources of infor-mation they had were the websites ofcompetitors, white papers that weresponsored by rivals, or my own biasedopinion (after all, I did want them towork for me). Nothing really objectiveabout the buying patterns of clients?Well, this is no longer the case.
Continued on p.21
How to Use Research in Sales Continued
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 17
W ell… maybe it can. But I sureas heck have quit trying. After10 fairly successful years
owning and operating a translationcompany, I’ve learned what I’m bestat, what is difficult, and what is impos-sible for me to do well while, at thesame time, making a reasonable profit. Iadmit that for the first half of my trans-lation career I tried to be “all things toall customers” (ATTAC), but I have tothank the president of the corporation(Mrs. Spidle) for her wise lack of will-ingness to give away our limitedworking capital to try and impressfickle clients. After the last two diffi-cult years that saw our translationindustry shrink dramatically, I have nodoubt that our company is still aroundand will continue to be highly prof-itable more because of her frugalitythan of my desire to grow at any cost.
Buy market share you say? I don’tthink so. Maybe the big guys can buymarket share—the verdict isn’t in yetin my opinion. One hundred milliondollars in sales doesn’t impress mevery much when it’s accompanied bya 20 million dollar loss. But I’ve seenmore than a few translation compa-nies die recently from trying. Don’tget me wrong, though. As a recov-ering market share buyer, I finallyfeel guilty about the hard times I gavethe president of the corporation(POTC) when she so shortsightedlyrefused to let me lower our prices toget that temptingly large (but shortbudgeted) client, especially when itwas something we’d never donebefore or even had a clue as to how togo about doing. I surely don’t missassuring clients, telling them “Yeah,we can do that, we’re experts in fact,”when, in fact, I then had to go ask myproduction people, “Can we do this?Do you know how?”
Not long ago I was asked to lead aworkshop on target marketing for
translation companies at the summermeeting of ATA’s TranslationCompany Division (TCD) in ColoradoSprings. Like me, most of the activeTCD members tend to be at thesmaller end of the translation com-pany spectrum, and, I am proud to say,many of us really are Mom & Popbusinesses. Therefore, it really amazesme that so many of us are so com-mitted to the ATTAC philosophy. Thefollowing paragraphs reflect much ofwhat we learned at that event.
Now as then, the difficulty, as far asthe POTC is concerned, is how tostress the importance of target mar-keting without giving away the com-pany secrets. So I tried then, and amtrying now. Speaking generically, thetranslation market is extremely diverseand fragmented. It can be readilydivided into any number of narrowsegments. Many of these segmentsrequire substantial capital investmentin specialized skills, knowledge, andtechnologies if the required quality isto be profitably delivered.
Specializing in a narrow segmentgives you the opportunity to acquiretremendous competitive advantagethat can be decisive when, as fre-quently happens, you are competingwith a firm attempting to be ATTAC.You learn the jargon, find theindustry players, join their organiza-tions, exhibit at their conventions,advertise in their journals, and gener-ally become familiar to your targetmarket. This advantage doesn’t
accrue immediately, but rather needsto be earned over time. You don’t gofrom nobody to somebody overnight.My experience tells me it takes twoor three years to collect on your seg-ment investment, but when you col-lect it can be extremely lucrative.
Some obvious examples of trans-lation market segments are:
1. Software and website localizationrequires investment in engineeringcapability, and most especially asignificant investment in varioussoftware tools that simplify themany tasks required. I don’t likethis segment because it doesn’tseem too bright to me to competewith a company with 100 milliondollars in sales that doesn’t mindlosing 20 million dollars in theprocess. To quote my eight-year-old daughter…DUHHH?
2. Then there’s those large technicalmanual projects we all dream of.The crazy thing about them now isthat you have to invest a fortune insoftware and training and experi-ence in that software, which thenforces you to lower your price inan already hyper competitive mar-ketplace. This may be your cup oftea…but I’ll stick to my Starbucks.
3. One of my favorite TCD buddieshas a very successful interpreta-tion company in Oregon. He’sbuilt a large organization in ashort time and loves it. Being veryorganized (I actually suspect it’shis wife that’s so organized), he’sable to profitably obtain and trackscores of individual interpretationjobs per month. Could this seg-ment be for you?
4. Literary translations…you’re kid-ding, right? Well, maybe not.
Can a Translation Company Really Be All Things toAll Customers?By Adrian P. Spidle, Jr.
“…The main point is notthat I’ve found the ‘right
segments,’ but rather thatI’ve found the ‘right
segments’ for me…”
➡
The ATA Chronicle | March 200318
There doesn’t seem to be ashortage of literary translators.This segment can be very satis-fying if you can put up with itsvagaries and low prices.
5. Medical and pharmaceutical trans-lations can be lucrative, but theycarry a huge risk and share all thetechnical manual shortcomingsdetailed in #2. Nonetheless, I likethis segment. There is plenty ofroom for us all in this one ifyou’re willing to invest in it.
6. I love the financial market.Those huge prospectuses andbrochures need to be translatedinto several languages and then,back-translated! Large newslet-ters need to be translated monthlyinto several languages. We’vetranslated insurance policies,underwriting forms, and insuranceapplications. I know this markethas slowed a lot, but it shouldexplode in the next bull market.
7. Legal translation is a definite spe-cialty, and there are several sub-sets within that specialty. Thereare plenty of disgruntled lawyersavailable to help you in this area,and lots of arcane terminology foryou to learn so you can sound likeyou know what you’re doing.There are plenty of advertisingmedia and lawyers’ conferencesfor you to attend. I like this one.
8. Since the POTC is an outstandingdesktop publisher, we started outspecializing in and targetingadvertising and design agenciesback in the olden days. While itwas fun to brag about workingwith top companies in high pro-file campaigns, the dollar volumeto babysitting ratio ($/BS) was
much too high. If you just lovediscussing typefaces, point sizes,leading, text expansion, and thetranscendent value of whitespace…well, then, this segment isfor you…but not for us anymore.
9. Early in our career, we did a lot ofwork for a Fortune 500 defensecontractor. Every now and then itwas actually profitable, some-times. I loved bragging that we’dtranslated a large PowerPoint fileused by the company president topitch a missile system to the pres-ident of Taiwan…but, the biddingprocess dictates low margins, andthe very high $/BS ratio and the“cover-your-own-butt” employeeattitude finally drove us out of thatsegment. However, if you thrive inthe bureaucratic world, then thiscould be the segment for you.
10. If you like defense contractors,you’ll love the federal govern-ment. They have frequent work-shops on how easy it is to getlucrative contracts. I’ve been to afew—you might even get to meetone of your congressmen or sena-tors at one of them—but we’venever been able to even get a bidin on time. Now it’s not too hardto be more organized than me, sothis segment could very well belike eating candy for you.
11. State and local governments buyplenty of translation. If you are agenetic do-gooder and love tokvetch about how unfair life is innumerous meetings consisting ofvarious constituent stakeholders…well, then, you’ll really love thissegment.
There are many more segments,some of which even I don’t know
about. If you know of one, don’t tellme about it or you might find your-self competing with me in the nearfuture…nahh, just kidding.
The main point is not that I’vefound the “right segments,” but ratherthat I’ve found the “right segments”for me. I sleep much better now that Iknow that our firm is the absolutebest option for certain clients in cer-tain segments. You’ll love the peaceof mind that such confidence brings.
I don’t necessarily tell inquirersfrom nontargeted segments to goaway. After 10 years of ATA mem-bership and as a charter member ofthe TCD, I now have many friendswho own translation companiesthroughout the country (and world)with different competencies. So, if Ican’t do your job, I know who can,and I partner with them for that oneclient or project.
This short-term partnering strategydoesn’t work for everyone. There arestill plenty of paranoid translationcompany owners who consider com-petitors enemies (I used to work forone). But I see ATA’s TranslationCompany Division as a new hope forsmaller companies, and a sign thatour industry is finally growing up.
The following outlines a few real-world examples of partnering inaction. I recently had an inquiry froma major medical equipment manufac-turer to translate a highly technicalmanual to Japanese using Trados andFramemaker. In the past, I wouldhave struggled to do this myself, withuncertain results, or just walked awayfrom it. Instead, one of my TCD bud-dies agreed to do it and gave me a$2,000 finders fee for the project. Ialso use a TCD member to do all myPortuguese, another to do my Asianlanguages, and another to do layout.
Continued on p.24
Can a Translation Company Really be All Things to All Customers? Continued
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 19
W e asked Allied BusinessIntelligence Inc. (ABI), amarket research firm, to
share with us the findings of theirnew report Language Translation,Localization, and Globalization:World Market Forecasts, IndustryDrivers, and eSolutions. The studyfocuses on the changing nature of thelanguage translation industry andwhat it means to translators andglobal companies alike. The fol-lowing is an overview of some oftheir observations.
Language translation is anindustry as old as civilization.Cultures have used translators tocommunicate with neighbors of dif-fering cultures and languages for cen-turies. Today, modern day translatorshave at their disposal a number oftools to help in the process of takinga text from one language to another.
One of the driving forces behindthe global landscape of business is thedevelopment of the Internet.Companies can no longer assumetheir customers will come to themunder their own umbrella of nation-alism. Online populations aregrowing at increasing rates in non-English-speaking regions of theworld. Customer retention and site“stickiness” have been shown toincrease when visitors can accessinformation in their native language.Operation in this global economy willbe the primary driver in the languagetranslation and associated markets.
The market for translation isexpanding. The consolidation oftranslation firms that is occurringthrough mergers and acquisitions willonly make for larger companies thatcan offer a broader service to fit theircustomers’ needs. There are noeconomies of scale in this market.Translation is still a very individual
process. Quality is the driving factorfor a successful business.
Prior to September 11, 2001, noone in the U.S. could conceive of theimpact of terrorist attacks on home-land soil. In the wake of these attacks,the glaring deficiencies of the federalgovernment to detect such threatswere made clear. The translation ofintercepted messages from knownthreatening nations and groups is now
a core prerequisite in defending thisnation. Since the September 11thattacks, the U.S. agencies chargedwith a counterterrorism mission havetried to make up for these shortfallsby hiring more qualified linguists tosupport their efforts.
In all, the worldwide forecast forthe translation marketplace is rosy.According to ABI’s report, LanguageTranslation, Localization, and Global-ization: World Market Forecasts,Industry Drivers, and eSolutions, thehuman translation segment, the largestcomponent of this market, is expectedto be an $11.5 billion market in 2007.
Companies looking beyond theirborders will be taking their productsand services and delivering them intonew markets, many of which operatedifferently from those in the UnitedStates. Localization refers to theprocess of adapting a product (often,but not always, a software applicationor hardware component) or service tomeet the language, cultural, and tech-nical requirements of a specific targetenvironment or market. Not only
does the text need to be translated forthe language, but all graphics andcultural references need to be adaptedas well. A U.S. company using cul-tural idioms such as “baseball andapple pie” will not be understood inother cultures. Translators who areimmersed in the “target” languagewill be able to pick up such phrasesand translate them into a more mean-ingful reference for the intendedaudience. Ultimately, the goal is forthe user to be unaware that the con-tent and origin of the site is producedin another country and language.
Companies have been wrestlingwith localization issues for manyyears. When Gerber first marketedbaby food in Africa, the companyused the same packaging labels, withtheir “Gerber Baby,” it had used inthe United States. When sales plum-meted, their investigation uncoveredthe common practice in Africa ofusing pictures of the contents on foodlabeling because of the diverse lan-guages found on the continent. Thepicture of a baby on the packagingwas shocking to consumers in what itimplied to them. In another instance,while British culture is not very dif-ferent from U.S. culture, the trash canin the Macintosh operating systemlooks, to the British, more like one oftheir British postal boxes. There werereports of people accidentally puttingtheir outgoing e-mail in the trash can.Thus, localization ideally involvesmaking a product look as if it werecreated in the target country.
As more companies expand theirpresence on the Internet, localizationof websites will be a fast-growingmarket for translators. Content on awebpage generally changes with muchgreater frequency than product docu-mentation or software content. Thismeans more of a market for transla-tors to update the information
Language Translation, Localization, andGlobalizationBy Laraine Tunick
“…Demands fortranslations are increasing
as the sheer volume ofinformation grows…”
➡
The ATA Chronicle | March 200320
frequently. Because of this constantstream of changing content, manyproviders in this market are developingsolutions to meet the requirements ofboth high quality and rapid turnover.ABI forecasts the website localizationmarket at $3.1 billion in 2007.
This puts great importance on theshoulders of translators. Simple word-for-word translation will not suffice.A translator needs to be familiar withall the nuances of language in both thesource and target language. A certainamount of interpretation is needed aswell. The market for translators isgrowing. ABI’s market forecastsassume that full-time translators workan average of 30 hours per week (theremaining time being taken up byadministrative tasks), 50 weeks peryear. Part-time translators work anaverage of 15 hours per week, 50weeks per year. The human transla-tion market is based on the averageworking hours and average wages thatvary from region to region. Someslight changes in the wages are basedon the assumption that in some unde-veloped countries and regions, the jobof translation is a relatively highlypaid profession.
ABI estimates that of the 51,000translators in North America, 37%work full-time. This leaves a largenumber who work in this professionon a part-time basis. Translators whowork for themselves or as freelancershave the opportunity to manage theirown work schedules. For others whowork full-time in the translation field,many work for translation agencies,localization firms, or as captive trans-lators (those employed in the transla-tion departments of firms not in thetranslation business). For some com-panies where the volume of informa-tion that needs to be translated is largeand continuous, it may be most cost-effective to hire their own in-house
translators. In this way, the translatorsnot only are familiar with the lan-guage(s) that need to be translated,but they also become familiar with thecompany’s products or services andthe terminology used therein.
Today, translators have a number oftools to help them in their profession.Translation tools include various com-puter technologies to assist in theprocess of translating material fromone language to another. In the last fewyears, these tools have increased inpopularity with professional transla-tors. Advances in database technologyand PC computing power have made itpossible for these systems to store andretrieve large amounts of previouslytranslated material. Translation toolshave benefits for translators only, as20% to 50% or more of the documentwill still require manual translation.
Management software acts as astorage bank for source and targetterminology that can be retrievedduring the translation process.Terminology managers are particu-larly useful for translators workingwith industry-specific terminology.The functions of these managementtools include a data repository, termi-nology extraction and insertion, andterm lookup.
Translation memory (TM) is adatabase that stores previously trans-lated sentences that can be retrievedin future translation projects in orderto prevent repetitive, time-consumingwork. Pre-translated sentences in thetext are retrieved via fuzzy matching,leaving only parts of the sentence thatdo not have matches to the translator.TM products are particularly effec-tive when used on text that must beperiodically updated or changed. TMis the core technology that manytranslation tools are based on.
Translators often develop TM data-banks in-house. In fact, many of the
translation tools that are currently onthe market began as in-house creationswithin translation bureaus. TM soft-ware is commonly used by translators,and a highly developed system canreduce the length of the translationprocess by 50%. Additionally, reduc-tions in total translation costs ofbetween 15% and 30% can be realized.
Translator workbenches represent acategory of translation tools that arebased on TM technology. In addition toTM, these tools typically contain func-tions such as word count format filtersand converters, measurements forproject pricing and sizing, and align-ment tools to develop memories frompast translations. The use of workbenchtools contributes to greater consistencywithin the text, particularly when morethan one translator is involved.
A translator’s workbench com-pares segments of text from sourcedocuments with translated pairs ofwords, phrases, or even paragraphsthat are stored in the product’s TM. Ifan exact match is found, a suggestionis made to the translator, who thenhas the option of using or amendingthe translated text. When an exactmatch cannot be located, the tool usesfuzzy matching algorithms to comeup with the TM’s next best match.Translator workbenches are popularwith translators worldwide, as theyprovide key benefits, including pro-ductivity improvements andincreased consistency, and allowtranslators to reuse and recycle previ-ously translated materials.
Demands for translations areincreasing as the sheer volume ofinformation grows. Additionally,companies are now putting structuredimplementations in place to deal withinformation sharing, both within andoutside the organization. Translatorsare required to keep up, not only withthe nuances of language and culture,
Language Translation, Localization, and Globalization Continued
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 21
but with the business terminologyand technical jargon that their clients’businesses require.
Growth will come as more compa-nies prepare themselves to enter theglobal market. The slowed U.S.economy has dampened expectationsfor some, but once over the hump, we
can expect many companies in IT,pharmaceutical, automotive, amongothers, to ramp up to meet demand.
NoteThe latest edition of ABI’s language
translation study, Language Trans-lation, Localization, and Globalization:
World Market Forecasts, IndustryDrivers, and eSolutions, is now avail-able. ATA members are entitled to a15% discount off the price of thereport. For more information, pleasevisit www.alliedworld.com or call(516) 624-3113.
Get into the Professional Habit ofUsing Market Intelligence
Established sectors in the economyhave significant resources at their dis-posal, from multiple trade publicationsto dedicated practices in major consult-ing and law firms. Executives in thesesectors rely on the knowledge of othersto support their decision-makingprocess and to avoid reinventing thewheel. They pay top dollar to researchcompanies to analyze trends and statis-tics and to design marketing programsbased on market analyses.
Until now, the translation industryhas relied mostly on astrologers and onthe knowledge of a few good people,
disseminated only by word of mouth.But as you try to convince yourprospects about your value to theirbusiness, and as you become moreprofessional, your requirements foraccurate, formal information and reli-able sources increase.
By creating the habit of buying andusing research in your work, you cre-ate demand for valuable informationby your people and clients. You willfind that the more you use it, the morevalue research will hold for you. Afterall, the cost of a report is a fraction ofthe cost of sending people to confer-ences. It is less than the commissionyou would pay for the sale of a major
project (incidentally, the properresearch will enable you to closethose big projects). It is the price youpay for information you don’t have.
Note: Common Sense Advisory hasrecently published two comprehensivereports about the localizationindustry. Beggars at the GlobalizationBanquet (available by subscriptiononly) and Where the TranslationMoney Is, An Atlas of BusinessOpportunities (for sale at the CommonSense Advisory website). For moreinformation, visit www.common-senseadvisory.com or call 1-866-L10N-101 or 1-646-286-7975.
How to Use Research in Sales Continued from p.16
“Ghosts,” the 2002 issue of TWO LINES: A Journal of Translation, is now available. To
order our latest issue of world literature, or any of our previous issues, send a check or
money order for the total cost of the issues you wish to receive plus postage.*
Ghosts (2002): $14
Back issues $11 each: Cells (2001); Crossings (2000); Fires (1999); Ages (1998);
Possession (1997); Waves (1996); Tracks (1995)
All eight issues: $75
Any three issues: $30
*Postage: $2 within the U.S.; $2.50 to Canada or Mexico; $4 for international
orders; add $1 per additional item.
TWO LINES: A Journal ofTranslation
2002 issue:“Ghosts”
The ATA Chronicle | March 200322
D oes this sound familiar?For this translation memoryprogram, you can stay right in
the environment that you alreadyknow, and you only have to learn afew new shortcuts.
Or:
All you have to do is to right-click ona file and select Translate.
To me, these marketing slogans“translate” as follows: “We think thatyou are really not smart enough tounderstand much about computers,and are certainly not clever enough tolearn programs or, for that matter, toopen them appropriately. This is whywe address you with this lowestcommon denominator.”
Maybe it’s not completely fair tointerpret these slogans so harshly, butthe fact is that similar ones are oftenused as the primary marketing mes-sage for tools—including translationmemory applications—that manytranslators are supposed to spendmost of their active work time using.Now, no one will disagree that it is apositive thing for any product,including software programs, to beeasy to use and intuitive to learn. Butis this why we buy it? If you take alook at the websites that market the“corporate” versions of the same pro-grams, you will be hard-pressed tofind any mention of “easy” or “intu-itive.” Are those potential users more“professional” than we are? IfMicrosoft praises the ease of use of itshome editions of Office or Windows,it communicates appropriately to itsbroad masses of non-expert users. Butshould we be placed at the same basiclevel when we buy a highly special-ized translation application?
The typical modern translatorspends a disproportionate amount of
his or her working time behind thecomputer screen. Given this reality, it isremarkable (to say the least) that tech-nology providers successfully markettheir products not primarily on thebasis of processing power, productivityincrease, or quality gain (all of whichare indeed marks of many of thosetools), but instead on ease of use. Myquestion is not whether the toolproviders are successful in marketingtheir products in this way—I know theyare. Instead, I am curious about the
effect of these messages. Is it this lowexpectation of software manufacturersthat causes translators to feel inade-quate to the task, or do we feel inade-quate to start with and are these slogansjust hammering it in? The answer prob-ably lies somewhere in between thoseassumptions. What is important for us,however, is to gain confidence andknowledge about the computer, ratherthan just surviving with it.
My reason for writing this is obvi-ously not to insult translators. Instead,I truly believe that there is a need formore computer education and agreater awareness that the computercan be your friend, or—as I write inmy new book—your “tool box.” Overthe years, I have worked on numeroustranslation teams, and even offeredsupport for one of the major com-puter-assisted translation tools. Iknow the computer knowledge of theaverage freelance translator is prob-ably somewhere in the area of 3 on ascale of 1-10. To work most effec-
tively, it should be an 8 or 9.What strikes me most about all of
this is how we manage somehow toclassify our lack of technical under-standing in our own work environ-ment into a different category fromthe technical understanding that weneed for our translation work. Afterall, many of us translate highly tech-nical documents, including computersoftware and documentation thatdescribe infinitely more technicalissues than we will ever have to dealwith in our work with computers.
True, if we had to weigh the valueof having translation skills versuscomputer skills, translation skillswould win hands down. We wouldn’tbe able to make a living as translatorswithout being able to translate, whilewe can survive without being particu-larly skilled on the computer, amere—albeit major—tool. But if thecomputer is indeed a major tool,wouldn’t that alone be reason enoughto really try to master it? A print shopworker who is not skilled with com-puters nowadays may still be able toprint beautifully, but he would mostlikely not find a job because thedemands of the printing world (andthe print shop owner) have changed.Many of us translators are freelancerswho do not face the same externalpressure as the print shop worker.However, we also own our own busi-nesses, so we should have the sameconsiderations as the print shop ownerand require a honing of our skills.
It’s clear that my answer to thequestion in the title of this article (per-haps it should be called a polemicpamphlet!) is: No, we are not stupid. Atsome point, someone must have com-municated to us that computers areonly a necessary evil that we should nei-ther trust nor really become acquaintedwith. Or maybe we convinced ourselves that this was the case with
Are We Stupid?
By Jost Zetzsche
“…It is important for us togain confidence andknowledge about the
computer…”
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 23
an almost in-born fear that computers,especially computer-assisted transla-tion software, are a real threat to ourlivelihood. At this point in time, how-ever, nothing could be further fromthe truth. If we have the patience toupgrade our computer skills and toinvest in the necessary software, ourcomputers can give us tremendousopportunities to produce better andmore consistent translations and, atthe same time, to make more money.
Here are some ways you can beginto reclaim your computer and yourconfidence:
• Fine-tune and personalize youroperating system to your ownspecifications so it looks and
responds the way you want it to,just as you design your own officespace for maximum efficiency.
• Build up your library of utilities—you can often download programsfor free or at a minimum pricefrom the Internet—that are devel-oped specifically to save you timeand effort.
• Make an informed decision onwhich office suite software andversion is right for you.
• Don’t be afraid of computer-assisted translation software. Thereare differences among them thatneed to be researched and takeninto account, but learning to useone of these programs well canmake a spectacular difference in
your translation work and earnings.
For details on these steps andmany more, I’ve written a new bookcalled A Translator’s Tool Box for the 21st Century. You can findmore information on the book atwww.internationalwriters.com/toolbox.
There have never been moreresources to help translators succeedthan we have today, and the computerplays a central role in nearly all. Asskilled craftsmen, we know that it’s notenough to have the right tools—we alsoneed to know how to use them. Andwith our skills and experience, we arewell qualified to learn to use them well.
Is your ATA chapter planning an event? Does that event have need for a distinguished,
dynamic, industry-relevant speaker? If so, ATA’s Professional Development Committee
wants to help! ATA’s Professional Development Committee offers a seed money fund for
speakers. Be sure to call ATA today for application guidelines and a list of fabulous speakers
who could be guests at your next meeting, workshop, or seminar.
ATA’s chapters play a key role in the continuing education of their members. Since the
chapters vary greatly in number and composition of members, it can be hard for some
chapters to offer educational opportunities to everyone. As a service to all ATA members
and as a benefit of chapterhood, ATA would like to support these educational efforts by
subsidizing presentations that might otherwise prove to be a financial burden for individual
chapters.
The fund was designed for ATA chapters, so don’t let the opportunity pass you by.
Contact [email protected] at ATA Headquarters soon for all the details!
ATA Chapter Seed Money Fund
The ATA Chronicle | March 200324
H ow much of your day isinvolved with solving otherpeople’s problems? Many
business owners spend half their timesolving problems for their teammembers. This is time that they couldbe using to work “on” their busi-nesses rather than “in” their busi-nesses. In addition, if you solve theproblems for your team members,you are not educating them tobecome effective managers.
These four steps to innovativeproblem solving can guide you andyour team to timely, productive, andprofitable answers to your chal-lenges. The key here is that if youcan’t answer all the questions, youmay not be looking at the right issue.
Step 1. Confirming and Outlining the Problem
Facing the problem is usually thehardest part, looking at a problemsquare in the eye. If you are seriousabout finding a solution, you need tofirst confirm that there is a problem.Once you have confirmation, outlinethe problem. Ask yourself and yourteam, “What is the real issue here?”Look at the source of the discovery.Are team members blaming otherteam members or clients? Are youblaming others? And finally, youhave to ask the toughest question—are you part of the problem?
Step 2. Creating SolutionsBeing very clear on the issues
opens new doors of thinking and per-spectives. A clear vision of theproblem allows various choices toappear. Take the time to write downall the possible choices, even onesthat may seem “far out.” Remember,there could be a seed of wisdom there.Don’t eliminate anything. This is theart of brainstorming. Be aware that inorder to brainstorm effectively, theleader needs to participate in the ses-sion rather than conduct it.
Step 3. Evaluating SolutionsThis is where you weed your ideas
and evaluate each potential solution.Which ones “speak” to you? If they“speak,” then consider the resourcesnecessary (i.e., what will it take to getthis plan in motion?). Are the resourcesavailable and are they appropriate? Inother words, how much is it going tocost? Some people think that by
throwing money at a problem, youcan solve it, and that isn’t necessarilyso. Next, you need to estimate theprobability of success. Take thoseideas and weigh and balance them tofigure out which are the most feasible.This is simply guessing, the first stepin a statistical analysis. Select thethree best ideas to work on, since anymore than that makes the final choicenext to impossible.
Step 4. Creating the Action PlanThis is where you establish your
game/strategic plan. Write down thenecessary action steps, with an antici-pated timeline of completion. Yournext step is to anticipate obstacles.What’s in the way of implementingyour new plan, and what is needed toovercome these challenges? Brain-storm once again with some differentstaff members to get another perspec-tive. Try experimenting with theideas. As you weigh the strengths andweaknesses, you can make your finaladjustments. Be sure to allow for thecreative process in your outcome.
For a free worksheet that will helpyou organize and proceed with thisprocess, send an e-mail to barton@ bartongoldsmith.com with the words“Problem Solving” in the subject line, oryou may call toll-free at (866) 522-7866.
“…Innovative problemsolving can guide you and
your team to timely,productive, and profitable
answers to yourchallenges…”
The Four Corners of Problem Solving
By Barton Goldsmith, Ph.D.
Also, I’ve used others to help me oncertain large/tight deadline projects…in fact, I recently paid one TCDmember over $10,000 to help me onone project.
In conclusion, I believe the combi-nation of targeting those tasks and
segments you’re best at, together withpartnering up with your ATA col-leagues to cover your nontargeted seg-ments and tasks, is a sign of industrymaturity and the best of all possibleworlds for translation companiesstruggling to adjust and survive in the
rapidly evolving translation market oftoday. My plea to you folks, myfriends, is: “Translation companies ofthe world unite, we have nothing tolose but our nightmares, and we havea world to gain.”
Can a Translation Company Really be All Things to All Customers? Continued from p.18
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 25
G eneral Henry Martyn Robert,author of the infamousRobert’s Rules of Order, was
not born a procedural guru. This is hisdescription of the meeting he had tochair in 1863 in New Bedford,Massachusetts—“I plunged in, trustingto Providence that the assemblywould behave itself...” In 1997,when I had the honor of being electedto the office of ATA president-elect,I did have a little more experiencethan Robert, but I shared the sameanxiety at the prospect of making afool of myself in public. To conquerthis fear, I set out to learn about par-liamentary procedure in a system-atic way.
Five dusty books and one videotapeof stupefying boredom later, I began tosee the forest through the proceduraltrees. Gradually, as I grappled with thedifference between “to table” and “topostpone” and stubbed my toes on“rescind” and “reconsider,” it becameclear that no one can ever master par-liamentary procedure. The rules asthey are given in Robert’s Rules ofOrder, Newly Revised, Tenth Edition,are so arcane, so minute, and so para-lyzing that even parliamentarians can’tmemorize them all. Like lesser mor-tals, professional parliamentarianshave their printed Robert’s Rules inhand and refer to it to settle issues thatarise. Like lesser mortals, they mayalso differ on the correct interpretationof those rules.
I might have thrown in the towelright then, except for the fact thatATA’s bylaws, like the bylaws of per-haps 90% of the voluntary associationsin this country, cite Robert’s as theirauthority. Deciding to ignore the wholeissue didn’t seem a viable prospect. AsI kept reading, studying, and reflectingon the real-life examples that occurredin the board meetings I attended, theshape of the forest became a little
clearer to me. I realized that the rules,confusing as they sometimes are, makemuch more sense when one under-stands the principles that underliethem. And of all the motions in thebook, only a handful are essential formost meetings. I decided to pluck themost essential ideas I had learned andoffer them in a single training session,entitled, in homage to my son’s toydinosaurs that I use in the classroom toexplain precedence of motions,“Jurassic Parliament.”
There are many different ways todiscuss issues and to make decisions.The training session I devised is ori-ented towards small boards—between5 and 20 people—and proceduresused for voting. Roberts’ Rules allowplenty of scope for differing ways todiscuss an issue, under the phrase“clarification of opinion.” Onceopinion is clear, however, it becomestime to vote. It may come as a surpriseto learn that nonprofit organizations,whether incorporated or not, are obli-gated to use parliamentary procedureunless they have chosen anothermethod of making decisions.
Robert’s is one codification—thereare others—of what is called“common parliamentary law.” Boardsare bound by common parliamentarylaw unless they have selected anotherauthority. Yet to many people Robert’sRules seem daunting, and the wholebusiness too complex to be practical.This article will lay out some of thekey ideas in a way that will, I hope,make the underlying reasoning behind
these rules clear. The truth of thematter is, running great meetings is notrocket science, but rather a matter ofunderstanding some key principles andapplying them consistently. Theapproach makes for efficient, easymeetings that are fair and, at least mostof the time, pleasant.
Since many of us have to spendtime in meetings, this discussion will,I hope, prove useful to many ATAChronicle readers. Translators ofmeeting minutes and interpreters whoserve during corporate or nonprofitmeetings have also found the parlia-mentary information to be valuableas a roadmap out of the swamp ofrules and procedure.
1) Role of the Presider. The firstprinciple is that the presider is boththe most important person in themeeting and the least important. Asthe person leading a meeting, I deter-mine its chances of success. If I comeinto a meeting acting angry and arbi-trary, the members will soon becomerestive. If I come into a meeting dis-organized and confused, the meetingwill also be so. If, on the other hand, Icome into a meeting calm, centered,and ready to do business in a quiet butpurposeful way, we will do muchbetter. A group takes its emotionaltone from its leader. Given the wayhuman groups operate, it is essentialfor the presider to be as composed,calm, and centered as possible. So inone way, as presider, I am the mostimportant person in the room.
At the same time, the chairman,the president, the grand pooh bah, orthe almighty one who is “in charge”of our organization becomes, whenstanding at the podium, only the ser-vant of the assembly (members gath-ered together). However strong herviews, however passionate her con-victions, with gavel in hand, it is ➡
“…When order and clarityreign, a meeting is farmore likely to fulfill its
purpose…”
Jurassic Parliament: Or How to Run Great MeetingsBy Ann G. Macfarlane
The ATA Chronicle | March 200326
her job to assist the group to formu-late its opinion and make good deci-sions. In large assemblies, therequirement not to exercise undueinfluence is so strong that thepresider may not vote, except in tiesituations. In small boards also,things usually go better if the presiderrefrains from voting. In this aspect,the presider is the least importantperson in the room.
2) Primacy of the Assembly. Thesecond principle is that the assemblyis the source of authority and the finalarbiter of difficult decisions. If a hotdebate is under way, for instance, andthe person who has moved a motionchanges his mind, he does not havethe right to withdraw his motion uni-laterally. Rather, he must ask permis-sion of the assembly to do so. If thepresider has issued a ruling andsomeone contests it, the matter mustbe referred to the assembly as awhole. Under parliamentary law, theassembly is the final authority.
This is very helpful to presidersconfronted with difficult memberswho want to hog the floor. Thepresider can turn to the group and ask,“Shall the member be given the flooragain, even though he has alreadyspoken twice? All those in favor,please say aye.” Presiders should neverget into power struggles with the mem-bers, but should always turn to thegroup as a whole to make a decision. Ifa presider has made a ruling that amember doesn’t like, the presider canimmediately put it to the group: “Shallthe decision of the chair be upheld? Allthose in favor please say aye.”
When I first learned of this prin-ciple, I wasn’t too thrilled with it,because in some instances I felt that Imight know better than the group as awhole. On reflection, though, I cameto see it as an extension of Winston
Churchill’s comment about democ-racy. Churchill wrote that democracyis the worst system of government inthe world, except for all the othersthat have been tried from time totime. Given the burden that lies uponthe presider at a meeting, I now see itas a strength that he does not have tobe, cannot be, the final arbiter intough situations, but must turn to theassembly for that judgment.
3) A motion is a thing, and we takeone thing at a time. As always whenwe try to teach a subject we have notmastered, the act of teaching forces usto come to grips with concepts wemight have taken for granted. TheDictionary of Procedural Termsdefines a motion as “a proposal by amember in a deliberative assemblythat a procedure or a course of actionbe agreed to.” A less cumbersomeworking description is that a motionis “a proposal to do something.” Amember proposes that the group takesome action, and that proposal, ifnew, is a main motion. A mainmotion should be written down.(Those of you reading may also haveparticipated in meetings at which,once the vote was taken, someonesaid, “what did we just approve?”Getting it in writing prevents suchunhappy occurrences.)
Once a main motion is beingdebated, other main motions may notbe considered. If we are discussingwhether to build a dinosaur museum,a motion to censure City Hall is outof order. Getting this linear sequencedown is a key to success. It is notenough, however, simply to informmembers that other proposals are outof order. A good presider will alsolet people know at what stage in theproceedings other new ideas, othermain motions, may be considered.Staying emotionally connected to
the members, even when having toinform them of procedural rules,helps things flow smoothly.
One concept that has provenhelpful is that, unlike Eliza Doolittlein My Fair Lady, we can’t treatmotions as “words words words, I’mso sick of words...” The words of amotion, once proposed, seconded,and stated by the presider, become athing. The motion is an item of realsubstance that must be dealt withbefore one can go on. In the class Iteach, I use the toy dinosaurs to (Ihope) make this concept beautifullyclear. With a Tyrannosaurus rex onthe table and a brontosaurusimpeding his progress, anotherTyrannosaurus is not going to be ableto muscle in until the first two beastshave been gotten out of the way.
4) The amendment is decided beforethe motion. Once a main motion hasbeen made, one might choose to“amend” the motion. “Amending”simply means “improving.” A membermakes a proposal to add words, per-haps specifying that the museum shallnot cost more than $2 million. Or shemay want to strike out words, or tostrike out some words and insertothers. The amendment must be “ger-mane,” that is, it must pertain to thesubstance of the motion. The funnyaspect of it is, though, that once anamendment has been made and sec-onded, it is debated and decided beforethe main motion to which it pertains. Ifa member complains (“Why are wearguing about how much the museumwill cost when we haven’t evendecided whether to build a museum atall?”), there is no answer other than“that’s the way these particular ruleswork.” One of the questions I havemost often heard is “What amend-ment are we on right now, anyway?”Having a clear grasp of this principle
Jurassic Parliament: Or How to Run Great Meetings Continued
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 27
will enable you to appear as a guru ofparliamentary procedure.
In class I teach this “sequence ofmotions,” again using the toydinosaurs. Such objects might appearrather frivolous at the podium of aformal meeting, so I was pleased tolearn that Hugh Cannon, a highlyexperienced and respected profes-sional parliamentarian, uses a systemof index cards to keep track of motionsand their amendments. He suggeststhat the parliamentarian sit right nextto the presider and provide cards foreach motion and amendment, so that itis always perfectly clear where themeeting is in the order of events. Ifyour organization doesn’t have anappointed parliamentarian, perhapsyou can recruit the vice-president toassist you in this way. Having twopeople track the sequence of motionsseems a very effective way to proceed.It also ensures that your successor isgetting trained in meeting manage-ment, and won’t feel petrified at thepodium when his time comes.
5) Keep your numbers clear. I wasdelighted to discover that one canpurchase a little plastic card from theNational Association of Parliamen-tarians (www.parliamentarians.org)that charts the number of votesrequired for a simple majority or atwo-thirds vote. Pulling out a calcu-lator or counting on my fingersalways feels so tacky… It may beuseful to review the sequence ofnumbers that are involved in theseprocedures. There are two sets tothink about: the numbers needed for aquorum and the numbers needed for amotion to pass.
The word “quorum” comes fromthe Latin and means “how manypeople?” A quorum is the minimumnumber of voting members requiredfor business to be legally conducted.
This number is usually set in thebylaws. If not, a quorum is more than50% of the members (a “simplemajority”). So, an organization with100 voting members would need tohave 51 people show up to do busi-ness—perhaps a challenging require-ment in our busy times! And if themeeting starts out with those 51people, but six of them leave halfwaythrough to watch a football game, nomore business can be conducted. Themeeting has become “inquorate” (oneof my favorite jargon terms!).
The requirements for voting usu-ally refer to a percentage of thenumber of voting members who haveactually cast their votes. Say that our51 folks have forsaken sports andshowed up for the meeting, but only40 of them vote in a given motion. Itwould take 21 in favor for the motionto pass—more than 50%. And if only10 of them are voting, 6 will be suffi-cient for the motion to pass.
If you hold back and don’t vote atall, that is called “abstention,” and theeffect is the same as if you had notbeen at the meeting. (I was surprisedto learn that abstentions are notallowed in Australia, either in non-profit meetings or in the nationalelections. An acquaintance describedhow, when she didn’t vote in a certainelection, the authorities showed up atthe door to pursue the matter. This iscertainly different from our rough-and-ready tradition in the U.S.!)
For certain motions, in particularthe “call for the previous question,”the motion takes a two-thirds vote topass. The meaning of that arcane-sounding “call for the previous ques-tion” simply means “let’s stop talkingand vote.” The jargon term “previousquestion” actually means “pendingquestion,” the matter next up to bedecided. Cutting off debate is consid-ered a serious matter under Robert’s
Rules, and it shouldn’t be done unlessmost of the assembly is ready. Forour 51 hypothetical voters, this wouldmean that 34 of them would have tobe in favor for the motion to pass. Ifany of you have ever been in meet-ings where someone called out“question!” and the presider immedi-ately called for a vote, you now knowthat it was an improper proceeding.
6) When faced with an improper pro-ceeding, the thing to say is “point oforder.” All this motion means is thatthe member believes that somethinghas been improperly done, that therules have been violated in some way.In the movies, members at a meetingsometimes make themselves seriousnuisances by shouting “point oforder” on every occasion. In real life,however, it’s important for the mem-bers to be paying attention and to usethis motion when they notice some-thing significant. As a presidermyself, I, despite all my erudition,once forgot to take a vote. I wasgrateful to have that slight omissionpointed out by the members! Thepresider responds to the point and,hopefully, business goes on.
In my experience, most peoplewould rather have a root canal thanstudy parliamentary procedure. Thereputation is partially justified. Manyof us don’t feel very familiar with par-liamentary procedure. Those who doknow it sometimes use it as a weaponto win their battles, rather than a tool tomake things work better. I hope thatthis tour of some key concepts hasblown away a little of the fog.
I would like to leave any readerswho have occasion to play a role as amember at any meeting whatsoeverwith this final principle: as a member,you have the right to know and
Continued on p.38
“So, you do have a real job apartfrom this, don’t you?”
T his is a question that many con-cerned doctors often ask theinterpreters who keep appearing,
seemingly “out of the blue,” in theiroffices whenever the need arises tocommunicate with limited-Englishproficient (LEP) patients. Despitethe formidable impact of demo-graphic changes on the delivery ofhealthcare services in the U.S., anddespite the urgent need to adjustthose services in culturally and lin-guistically appropriate ways torespond to an increasingly diversepatient population, interpreting inhealthcare settings has yet to be fullyunderstood or viewed as a professionof its own worthy of recognition,respect, and fair compensation.
Traditionally, healthcare inter-preters were “self-made workers,”whose calling came about becausethey originally volunteered to puttheir language skills in the service oftheir community. This has especiallybeen the case within the last fewdecades, with wave after wave ofLEP refugees landing on U.S. shoresto escape political unrest in theirhomelands. Many still think ofhealthcare interpreting as somethingthat happens by chance, and considerit more of an impromptu volunteerservice than a profession supportedby adequate proficiency, knowledge,and training. Of course, interpretersbeing referred to as “community vol-unteers” or “ad-hoc” interpreters hasdone little to clear up this misconcep-tion. In fact, many continue to erro-neously believe that all bilingualpersons are fluent in both languages,that healthcare interpreting is simple,and that any bilingual person canfunction as a healthcare interpreterwithout training or learning aboutmedical vocabulary.
These misconceptions are what theCalifornia Healthcare InterpretersAssociation (CHIA)1 and its counter-parts around the nation have endeav-ored to correct in the last few years.And what better way to fulfill this mis-sion than through the establishment aconsistent set of standards of practicesby which healthcare interpretingservices may be measured? It is hopedthat doing so will lead to the recogni-tion and acceptance of the value ofhealthcare interpreting as a profession.
Development Process of theStandards of Practice
This critical mission has proven tobe a very tall order to fulfill for CHIA,a relatively small and fledgling non-profit organization made up of volun-teers. In fact, the project would nothave seen the light of day if not for theexpressed interest, support, funding,and encouragement provided by TheCalifornia Endowment.2
Entrusted with the creation of thedocument, CHIA’s Standards andCertification Committee undertook alabor of love that spanned 18 months,from January 2001 through September2002. In the process, the “CaliforniaStandards For Healthcare Interpreters:Ethical Principles, Protocols, andGuidance on Roles and Intervention”3
underwent 23 draft revisions before itsofficial release on September 28, 2002
at CHIA’s Second Annual Conferenceat Mount San Antonio College inWalnut, California.
Throughout this developmentprocess, the standards working groupremained committed to a collabora-tive process of public review andongoing feedback of the numerousdrafts of the emerging standards.Drafts of the document werereviewed by CHIA chapters (BayArea, Central Valley, and LosAngeles), at CHIA’s First AnnualConference in September 2001 at theCentral Valley Hospital in Fresno,and were posted on the association’swebsite. Additional drafts were alsoreviewed by four focus groups ofexperienced healthcare interpreters inOakland, Fresno, Los Angeles, andSan Diego in November 2001.4
The document illustrates CHIA’scommitment to bring the research andpractice fields together. This isreflected by its co-authors, bothrepresentatives from healthcare andcommunity-based organizations, whoseexperiences, skills, and knowledge aredrawn from a variety of fields, such asacademic, administrative, education,interpreting, research, and training.
What is the difference betweenCHIA’s Standards and other existingstandards?
The creation of CHIA’s Standardswas a complex process that startedwith the review of several existingstandards5 previously developedacross the U.S. and in Canada. Thepioneering work done by such groupsas the Massachusetts MedicalInterpreters Association (MMIA), theWorking Group of Minnesota Inter-preter Standards Advisory Com-mittee, and the Cross Cultural HealthCare Program in Seattle, Washington,and several others, has served as aninvaluable inspiration and catalyst in
The ATA Chronicle | March 200328
Introducing the CHIA “California Standards forHealthcare Interpreters”By Elizabeth Anh-Dao Nguyen
“…Many still think ofinterpreting as somethingthat happens by chance,
and consider it more of animpromptu volunteer
service than aprofession…”
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 29
the development process of CHIA’sStandards. Rather than reinventingthe wheel, CHIA drew from thestrengths of these existing standardsand sought to address some of theambiguities which have arisen. Suchambiguities were perceived in rela-tion to some of the “gray areas”around the ethical principles and theroles of healthcare interpreters.
The CHIA Standards documentincludes three main sections thatguide healthcare interpreters throughtheir complex tasks.
• Section 1 includes a set of six eth-ical principles serving to guide theactions of healthcare interpretersin the context of the patient’shealth and well-being. This sec-tion also includes a step-by-stepguidance on addressing ethicaldilemmas through an “ethical-decision-making process.”
• Section 2 recommends some stan-dardized procedures to help inter-preters work with patients andproviders in optimal conditions.This section also includes someorganizational recommendationsfor supporting the health and well-being of healthcare interpreters.
• Section 3 emphasizes the unique-ness of healthcare interpreting, andidentifies the communication bar-riers that LEP patients experience inhealthcare settings. These barrierscreate a need for healthcare inter-preters to take on multiple roles.This section offers a definition ofthese roles while also providing theinterpreters with strategies to facili-tate communication between LEPpatients and providers.
The document also sought to high-light the following points:
In the context of the patient’shealth and well-being. This conceptforms the overarching guiding prin-ciple that is emphasized throughoutCHIA’s Standards. CHIA recom-mends that every action taken by theinterpreter should be consideredwithin the context of “doing good” forthe patient’s health and well-being.
Ethical dilemmas and ethical deci-sion-making process. CHIA recog-nizes that upholding the ethicalprinciples was not always a clear-cut“do or don’t” type of action, andacknowledges instances when two ormore principles may collide with oneanother, thus creating ethicaldilemmas for the interpreters. Takingit a step further, the document pro-poses a set of steps to guide inter-preters through the process ofaddressing such ethical dilemmas.
Healthcare Interpreting is dif-ferent. Unlike other interpreting situ-ations, where the parties involvedmay often be in adversarial roles,healthcare interpreting is a distinctspecialty where all parties involvedshare one common goal—the poten-tial of a positive health outcome forthe patient. To that end, CHIA’sStandards strive to provide inter-preters with some clear guidance onthe multiple roles they may need toplay in order to continue to supportthe primary relationship between theLEP patient and provider, in the con-text of the health and well-being ofthe patient.
To advocate or not to advocate.Although the controversy still ragesaround how advocacy should bedefined or understood in the health-care context, and whether healthcareinterpreters should take on the role of“patient advocate,” CHIA has taken a
stand in favor of “patient advocacy”on the basis that it is “the duty of allhealthcare professionals to supportthe health and well-being of thepatient.” CHIA’s Standards definespatient advocacy as “actively sup-porting change in the interest of anindividual patient’s health and well-being.” The guideline leads inter-preters into careful consideration ofall the factors involved before inter-vening as patient advocates, and fur-ther recommends that the decision tointervene in each case must be left tothe interpreter’s judgment as a health-care professional. The document alsocautions interpreters to consider therole of patient advocate as an“optional role,” and to always weighthe potential benefits and risks beforetaking action.
The importance of obtaining ade-quate training. The ultimate messageconveyed throughout CHIA’sStandards is: Comprehensive and pro-fessional healthcare interpretertraining is essential in order to putinto practice the techniques andstrategies outlined. It is critical forbilingual individuals functioning ashealthcare interpreters, as well asorganizations employing bilingualindividuals or health workers as inter-preters, to realize the importance ofattending professional training pro-grams specifically designed to teachparticipants how to effectively carryout the ethical principles, as well asthe protocols and the different roles,of healthcare interpreters. Contrary towhat one might think, there are manyhealthcare interpreter training pro-grams available in several statesacross the United States. In Californiaalone, according to a recent studyfunded by The California Endow-ment, 27 on-going training programshave been identified.6 ➡
The ATA Chronicle | March 200330
What are some recommendationsfor using CHIA’s Standards ofPractice?
The Standards of Practice weredesigned with a number of targetaudiences in mind: healthcare inter-preters; bilingual health workers;healthcare administrators andproviders; interpreter trainers; com-munity advocates; legislators andgovernment agencies; foundations;policymakers; and researchers andothers in the academic community.
The Standards of Practice can beused in many ways in accordance withthe goals and objectives of each partic-ular audience. They can provide guide-lines for organizational policies andprocedures around cultural and lin-guistic access to healthcare, and con-tribute to the quality assurance process.They can be incorporated into inter-preter training curricula developed byeducational institutions, as well ashealthcare-, community-based, orinterpreter-service organizations. Theycan be a major component of the advo-cacy efforts to recognize and validatehealthcare interpreting as a profession.They can serve as the foundation forthe development of tests for stateaccreditation, certification, or licensureof interpreters, the outcome of whichcould be increased state reimbursementfor healthcare interpreting services.
In conclusion, with the dissemina-tion of the Standards of Practice,CHIA envisions a time when allhealthcare interpreters and providersacross the state will agree to workfrom the same set of expectations andethical standards, and will buildshared understanding of the ethics,protocols, and roles of interpreters inhealthcare settings. A consistent andmore professional way of deliveringinterpreting services in healthcare
settings will result in improved accessfor LEP patients, and will contributeto the recognition of healthcare inter-preting as a valued profession.
Notes1. CHIA is a nonprofit organization
founded in 1996 by a group ofinterpreters in California to help setprofessional standards for health-care interpreters (www.chia.ws).
2. The California Endowment is a pri-vate foundation whose emphasis ison funding organizations and proj-ects that improve and enhancehealthcare services for Californians(www.calendow.org).
3. The California Standards docu-ment is available on CHIA’s web-site (www.chia.ws/standards.htm).
4. For further information on the stan-dards development process, see thereport on CHIA’s focus groups(www.chia.ws/standards.htm).
5. Some of the earlier standards are(in chronological order):
Massachusetts Medical InterpretersAssociation & Education Devel-opment Center, I.M. 1995.Medical Interpreting Standards ofPractice. Boston: MassachusettsMedical Interpreters Association.
Office of Diversity Mount St.Joseph Hospital. 1996. HealthCare Interpreter Standards ofPractice. Vancouver, BritishColumbia, Canada: Mount St.Joseph Hospital.
Pollard, R.Q. J., et. al. 1997. MentalHealth Interpreting: A Mentored
Curriculum. Rochester, NewYork: Department of Psychiatry,University of Rochester Schoolof Medicine.
Working Group of MinnesotaInterpreter Standards AdvisoryCommittee. 1998. Bridging theLanguage Gap: How to Meet theNeed for Interpreters inMinnesota. Minneapolis, MN:Minnesota Interpreter StandardsAdvisory Committee, printedby Minnesota Department ofHealth and Family Support.
Roat, C.E., et.al. 1999. Bridging theGap: A Basic Training for MedicalInterpreters: Interpreter’s Hand-book (3rd ed. [1st ed., 1996]).Seattle, Washington: CrossCultural Health Care Program ofPacific Medical Clinics.
Garber, N. 2000. Standards ofPractice for Community Inter-preters: Version 2 (DraftStandards). London, Ontario:Across Languages.
Subcommittee F15.34 of theAmerican Society of Testingand Materials. 2000. StandardGuide for Quality LanguageInterpretation Services. (Docu-ment F2089). Conshohocken,PA: American Society forTesting and Materials (availableonline at www.astm.org).
6. For a summarized listing ofhealthcare interpreter training pro-grams in California, refer to CHIAnewsletter, winter 2002, Volume 4,Issue 3 (www.chia.ws).
Introducing the CHIA “California Standards for Healthcare Interpreters” Continued
For complete membership information, visit atanet.org today!
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 31
T he first day of shooting thefourth film in “the Alien fran-chise,” as 20th Century Fox
refers to it, Alien: Resurrection.Rehearsal, Scene 1, Take 1: SigourneyWeaver is held captive, aliens bashingaway at the door of her cell while shefrantically slashes her wrist to squirther “cloned alien blood” over the elec-tronic circuitry, madly trying toFrench-fry the monsters as theyinvade. Turning to Jean Pierre Jeunet,the French director of Amélie forwhom I was interpreting all that year,Weaver asks, “Would I have threeminutes, maybe five minutes ‘til theybreak through the door? I mean, howmany minutes would I have in reality,Jean Pierre?” The director, completelydeadpan: “Deux.” As Jeunet and I turntoward the camera for the take, hewhispers, rolling his eyes discreetly,“En réalité?” If I didn’t know italready, I knew it then: Toto, we arenot in Kansas!
At the time, I had a fair amount ofexperience as a professional actorand interpreter in the entertainmentindustry, most of which I lucked intowith little or no guidance. It wouldhave helped had I known the differentvenues/circumstances requiring inter-preting in this field, or that the simul-taneous mode is the one best suited tothe industry. Ideas on glossary devel-opment and job leads were also amake-it-up-as-you-go process. Whenthe Alien: Resurrection opportunitycame along, it was to require all myskills plus the utmost diplomacy inworking with a star who alreadyspoke the director’s language at anintermediate level.
Interpreting Venues and theSimultaneous Mode
The weekly per episode cost ofshooting Friends starts at $1 millionfor each of the six leads. Alien:
Resurrection had an $85 millionbudget, of which $11 million wasSigourney Weaver’s salary as star andco-producer. When the client’s timeamounts to this kind of money, do youwant to be perceived as the onewasting it? Imperatives of theIndustry, as it’s simply known outhere in LaLa Land, demand simulta-neous interpreting, or, indeed, it willbe you who will never work in thistown again.
In addition to TV and movie sets,the most common venues requiringinterpreting are film festivals, promo-tional screenings, and press tours. Inthe latter, director and star(s) hole upin adjoining luxury hotel suites for acouple of days while a public relationsrepresentative hustles entertainmentjournalists on tight schedules throughrevolving door interviews. You inter-pret simultaneously, since time equalsmoney—sound familiar? If you’regood, you’ll even get to eat the expen-sive room service lunch. On the otherhand, festivals and screenings requireinterpreting mainly for the Q & A ses-sion between audience and directorfollowing the film. Suddenly thehouse lights go up, and you’re onstagenext to the director, holding your ownmike that you have made a point ofrequesting beforehand from the organ-izers to: 1) provide the capability for
simultaneous interpretation, and 2)avoid any unseemly struggles betweenyou and the director over control of asole mike. The latter, while affording acomical (to others), even slapstick,spectacle in the glare of the lights, isnot the easiest way to learn this lesson.
Keep in mind that although youmay be simply “doing your job,” youare, as far as the audience is con-cerned, part of the entertainment. Andsince most lay people consider con-secutive interpreting of more than fiveminutes to be right up there withwatching paint dry, the simultaneousmode once again saves the day.Although no one is suggesting youvie with the director for the audi-ence’s attention, there is moreinvolved here than, for example, thestraightforward and accurate interpre-tation that would be required, say, at adeposition. It is paramount that youconvey emotional content at the sametime as the speaker. This is what audi-ences respond most to and what willmake your director and his film comealive, which is, after all, the point ofthe exercise. Emotion is the currencydirectors deal in, and an interpreterwho is accurate and expressive willalways get the job over one who ismerely accurate. After all, if you werea powerful film director, which kindof interpreter would you want toexpress your personality?
And since we’re on the subject, letme share a moment of interpreter nir-vana with you. I was onstage at theDirector’s Guild during a Q & A withan intense, passionate Italian director.Speaking into my own mike, Imatched him beat for beat, mirroringhis every expression and tone ofvoice. When the next audiencemember stood to ask a question, hefirst congratulated me on my work, atwhich point the entire audience—plus the director—burst into
Interpreting for the Entertainment Industry: Tips forThose Who Do Want to Work in This Town AgainBy Nancy Gilmour
“…Emotion is thecurrency directors deal in,and an interpreter who isaccurate and expressivewill always get the jobover one who is merely
accurate…”
➡
The ATA Chronicle | March 200332
applause! Euphoria! Ironically, anItalian acquaintance who was therelater urged me to revert to the con-secutive mode in the future to allowItalian-speaking audience membersunfettered enjoyment of theirdirector’s remarks. In over 15 yearsof experience, I have received such acomment, identical at that, only oncebefore, following a conference of theHollywood Foreign Press. Thebottom line in both cases is that I amthere to serve the best interests of myclient, interpreting both accuratelyand in a manner most appropriate toeach situation. The Director’s Guildaudience, obviously pleased with mywork, was predominantly American.Also, neither Italian nor French isspoken by a majority of theHollywood Foreign Press, for whomEnglish remains the lingua franca.Although bilingual audience mem-bers may have their own agenda, itcan conflict with the interests of themajority in attendance. However,since that’s not what they are open tohearing, at least in my experience,I’ve found a smile and saying “I’llthink about that for next time” usu-ally puts the issue to rest most effec-tively. Often organizers of suchevents have little experience withinterpreters, no clue as to the dif-ferent modes of interpreting, and nocriteria on which to base a choice. Wedo, and it is incumbent upon us tooffer appropriate guidance.
Developing Glossaries WithoutAlienating Directors
Film dictionaries/glossaries inItalian and French are hard to come byand are often less than satisfying. Thehandiest one I found in French isL’Anglais des Producteurs by Nicolasand Jean-Claude Robert (unfortu-nately, English→French only), and toa lesser extent Lexique Cinema Video
by Pascal Le Moal (French↔English).The series Translation of Film & VideoTerms into French (ditto into Italian)by Verne Carlson is fair, however, itdoes not contain explanations of theterms. The series is also published inSpanish, German, and Japanese.
I mainly rely on the informal glos-saries I’ve put together over 15-plusyears of experience, based on vocab-ulary gleaned from bilingual partici-pants in studio negotiating sessions,on sets, press tours, and in film festi-vals. Those without much publicspeaking experience might considervolunteering to interpret gratis forvisiting foreign directors at collegefilm festivals for the Q & A sessionsfollowing screenings. One caveat,however. Since schools almost neverhave a budget to cover interpreters,graduate language students usuallyget pressed into “gofer duty” (go forcoffee, for errands, etc.), which is notwhat I am suggesting. For the profes-sional who simply needs more expe-rience, particularly in front ofaudiences, interpreting at public Q & Asessions can ease the anxiety of stagefright. In terms of press tours, youwill be invited to the press-onlyscreening beforehand and/or given asubtitled cassette of the film alongwith publicity material containing astory synopsis and cast list, all ofwhich provide invaluable vocabulary.
Keep in mind, however, that if youcan’t make the press screening, it isinadvisable to bring to your director’sattention the fact that you viewed hisor her film at home on a VCR orDVD. Public relations agenciesorganizing press tours have consis-tently warned that most directors takea dim view of relegating their film tothe small screen. Now is as good atime as any to surrender to adirector’s boundless ego, which,according to film crews, is a rule
proven with amazingly few excep-tions. The good news is that presstours normally last only two days,and directors are usually on their bestbehavior with the entertainment jour-nalists who can promote (or dis-courage) attendance at their films.
Those Elusive LeadsDeveloping leads for future work
can take considerable perseverance.If you live in a large urban area, startby calling the language-appropriateforeign consulates and Chambers ofCommerce for information on pos-sible film commissions, festivals, orcultural foundations. For French andItalian in the L.A. area, there are theFrench Film & TV Department ofthe French Consulate General(www.consulfrance-losangeles.org/english/cultural_service.html); the L.A.Italian Film Awards (www.italfilmfest.com/content.html); and the ItalianInstitute of Culture (www.iicusa.org).Also in L.A., the Writer’s Guild, theDirector’s Guild, and The AmericanCinematheque all hold screenings offoreign-language films that are oftenfollowed by Q & A sessions onstagewith foreign directors. A general web-site for U.S. film festivals showcasingLatino filmmakers can be found atwww.lasculturas.com, and one forscreenings of French films in Florida,including links to numerous Frenchorganizations in the U.S., is atwww.french-cinema.com.
For interpreting on press tours,contact publicity departments in theNew York offices of film companiesthat produce or distribute foreignfilms in your language. Miramax,New Line Cinema, and Sony PicturesClassics are three of the biggest. Askwhether there will be a press tour inyour area and the name of the localPR agency that will handle the organ-ization end. Although you’ll be paid
Interpreting for the Entertainment Industry: Tips for Those Who Do Want to Work in This Town Again Continued
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 33
by the film company and negotiateyour rate with them (in writing), thelocal PR agencies are usually chargedwith finding interpreters. Once youmake such a contact and establish areputation for excellent work, youcan look forward to repeat businessfrom the same agency. Probably dueto the egos involved, sizeable invest-ments at stake, and the volatile natureof the business, the entertainmentindustry, like no other, relies onknown quantities.
A Dream JobIn L.A., the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts & Sciences holds theForeign Directors Symposium everyyear on the Saturday morning beforethe Oscars. Free and open to thepublic, interested interpreters havethe unprecedented opportunity ofattending the event, which showcasesfilms nominated for Best ForeignFilm, before deciding whether toapply to work the festival the fol-lowing year. Excerpts of the films arepresented and the directors intro-duced for a panel discussion onstage,which is followed by Q & A based onwritten questions from the audience.As soon as nominees are announced,usually by early February, inter-preters may call the Academy’s pub-licity department to offer theirservices to non-English speakingfilmmakers. Since the interpreterworks onstage before a packed house(usually an audience of 1,000), oftenfollowing the performance of otherinterpreters accompanying one ormore of the five directors, this is noplace for the faint of heart. (One ofthe best replies to the classic “Wouldyou like to make a film inHollywood?” came from the wryGabriele Salvatores, Italian directorof Mediterraneo which won BestForeign Film in 1992. After seeing
the Coen brothers’ Barton Fink, a dev-astating satire on Hollywood pro-ducers, Salvatores answered the abovequestion with: “I used to think so, butI’ve had second thoughts after seeingthe Coen brothers’ Barton Fink.”) Alittle-known perk of this assignment isaccompanying your director to the“Directors’ Lunch,” held after thefestival at one of the industry estab-lishments in Beverly Hills. All direc-tors whose films have beennominated for Oscars that yearattend, as well as a host of luminariessuch as Michelangelo Antonioni, MilosForman, Anthony Minghella, and BillyWilder in years past. Be prepared forenvious glances from Academy staffersas you accompany your director to thelimo, since interpreters are the onlynon-director mortals allowed.
Interpreting for the “Bilingual”Every interpreter’s nightmare,
right? Or it could have been hadSigourney Weaver not been the con-summate professional and highlyintelligent actor she is. Jeunetadvised me that he and Weaver hadmet in Paris without the benefit of aninterpreter, and that she spoke Frenchfairly well, at least at a solid, inter-mediate level. Therefore, I wasinstructed to proceed with great cau-tion. However, unlike many whomwe all know (and love) with thatmuch knowledge of a foreign lan-guage, she made no claim to be bilin-gual. Au contraire. She had thegreatest respect for our work becauseshe had studied a foreign language,and was quite aware of the difficul-ties of rendering the subtleties ofanother’s thoughts. Lucky me!
At our first meeting I began by sug-gesting she speak French with JeanPierre if that was her preference, and Iwould hang back on the lookout forwhen to jump in and clarify if it
appeared the process was faltering. Iacknowledged my concern overbecoming intrusive in her rapport withthe director, and made it clear I wouldalways accommodate her wishes. Onceshe was assured there would be no clashof egos originating on my part—aluxury no interpreter can afford, muchless with a star/co-producer earning acool $11 million—she relaxed intoEnglish, using her French mainly forsocial exchanges with Jean Pierre.
However, had there been greaterpotential for disaster, not unheard ofin any interpreting career, I have dis-covered a few useful guidelines.When observing two people withoutinterpreting, my eyes are always onthe listener. I look for body languageand facial clues (hunching of theshoulders, narrowing of eyes, acocked head) that belie under-standing, particularly when thespeaker uses false cognates or lesser-known idioms. If in any doubt, espe-cially when the subject is of criticalimportance, such as contract negotia-tions, or of emotional significancelike a compliment, I quietly jump inand address the listener with, “Wasthat clear to you?”
A good case in point was when Iwas interpreting at the Golden Globesfor French producer Marin Karmitz,who was attending with Polishdirector Krzysztof Kieslowski. Theawards had been duly given and, tothe serious Europeans’ chagrin, wewere making an appearance at theMiramax party—far too “Hollywood”an event for their tastes. They imme-diately sought refuge behind acolumn, hiding out in the back of theroom and conversing with each otherwith no need for me. Spotting HughGrant alone at the buffet and recallinghis background (was it Oxford or
Continued on p.50
A s a hardcore “functionalist,” Ibelieve that the translator’sdecisions in the translation
process should be (and usually are)guided by the communicative func-tion or functions the target text isintended to achieve for its receiversin the target situation. I also believethat this is a principle applying to anykind of text, not only to computermanuals and patient package inserts.I would like to illustrate this point byusing a group of texts for which thefunctionalist principle has been fre-quently contested: biblical texts.
Between 1994 and 1999, I wasinvolved, together with my husband,Klaus Berger, a New Testamentscholar at Heidelberg University, in anew German translation of the canon-ical texts of the New Testament (the51st German translation). In addition,we also worked on the re-translationand, in part, first German translationof about 60 apocryphal texts from thefirst two centuries of the Christian era(DNT 1999). Apart from the NewTestament, which we translated fromthe Greek, the other texts were avail-able in various languages, amongthem Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopic,and Arabic. Since my husband studiedthese languages during his universitytraining, whereas I have no more thanthe average school knowledge ofLatin, we worked on the basis of“split competence.” Thus, Klaus con-centrated on source languages andcultures (plus theological implica-tions), while I was responsible fortarget language and culture in addi-tion to transfer competence (includingnot only practical translation compe-tence, but also theoretical andmethodological meta-competence).This experience has provided me witha large number of interesting exam-ples of how the functional approachworks with biblical texts. Considering
the space constraints of this article,however, I will limit my observationsto some aspects of text function.
Drawing on the well-knownmodels presented by the German psy-chologist Karl Bühler (1934) and theTzech structuralist Roman Jakobson(1967), I developed a rather simplefour-function model for the transla-tion classroom (cf. Nord 1997; 2001),which, for the sake of clarity, I willuse here as well. The four basic func-tions are:
1. The referential or representativefunction;
2. The expressive function;3. The appellative function; and4. The phatic function.
Each of these basic functionsincludes a number of sub-functions toaccount for a more specific analysis. Inwhat follows, I will explain how thesefunctions can work across the culturebarrier, using one example for each.
The referential function of anutterance involves reference to, andrepresentation of, the objects andphenomena of the world or of a par-ticular object. To make the referentialfunction work, the receiver must beable to correlate the message given inthe text with the previous knowledge
they have about the world or the par-ticular object in question. In order toprevent the message from beingeither incomprehensible (because thereceivers cannot match what they arereading with what they know already)or boring (because the senderexplains too many details with whichthe receiver is familiar), text pro-ducers intuitively or deliberately tryto establish a balance between pre-supposed and new information whichthey consider appropriate for theaddressed audience. The alternationof “given” and “new” (topic andcomment) provides the text with bothcoherence and thematic progression.
Example 1A reader who is not familiar with
the source culture may fail to estab-lish coherence between what isdescribed in the text and what theyimagine to be the situation.
Luke 6:17–20And he came down with them[from the mountain] and stood inthe plain... And he lifted up hiseyes on his disciples and said...(KJV)
When Jesus had come down fromthe hill with the apostles, he stoodon a level place with a largenumber of his disciples...Jesuslooked at his disciples and said...(TEV 1992)
Dann stieg er mit ihnen vom Bergherab und machte halt auf einemebenen Feld. ...Jesus setzte sich,sah seine Jüngerinnen und Jüngeran und sagte... (DNT [1999]: Thenhe came down with them from themountain and stopped on a levelfield. ...Jesus sat down, looked athis disciples, and said...[my back-translation])
The ATA Chronicle | March 200334
What About Function(s) in Bible Translation?
By Christiane Nord
“... The intended functionwas to ‘bridge the gap’
between the two culturesby making the source
culture accessible to thetarget-culture readership
without taking its‘strangeness’ or
‘otherness’ away...”
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 35
Where are the disciples if Jesus hasto lift up his eyes on them while he isstanding in the plain? The bit of cul-tural knowledge the reader may belacking (and the translator did notthink of) is that, in the source culture,teachers used to sit while their lis-teners stood in a circle around them.Since the author assumed this habit tobe known by his addressees, he used ageneric verb that does not specifyhow Jesus “is” in the plain. The trans-lator(s) of the KJV adapted the text toEnglish style conventions, whichrequire a specific verb, thus con-tributing to an image of Jesus with hiseyes lifted up to heaven. The sameapplies to TEV (1992), but here thetranslators obviously detected theincoherence and leveled it out. TheDNT (1999) explains the situation,thus making the scene comprehen-sible without reducing its strangeness.
The expressive function refers tothe sender’s attitude and evaluation ofthe things and phenomena of theworld. If it is verbalized explicitly(e.g., by means of evaluative or emo-tive adjectives, as in: Cats are hor-rible!), the readers will understand iteven when they disagree. But if theevaluation is given implicitly (as in: Acat was sitting on the doorstep!), itmay be difficult to grasp for readerswho do not know on which valuesystem the utterance is based (is a caton the doorstep a good or bad thing?).Many qualities have different valueconnotations in two different cultures.Sometimes, a translator has to explici-tate an implicit evaluation to avoidmisinterpretations in the target culture.
Example 2The source text is apparently neu-
tral. The JKV and most older transla-tions, like the one by Luther (even inthe 1984 revised edition [LUT1984]), but also the more recent one
by Alfred Loisy (NTF 1922), renderthe Greek by an equally “neutral” verb,like comprehend or ergreifen, whereasmodern translations tend to explicitatetheir interpretations of the text. Thisexplicitation can be “negative,” in thesense of “Darkness rejected / did notaccept / did not understand the Light”(as in the NIV [1984]; the Spanishtranslation by Nácar/Colunga [SBN1975]; the German GNB [1997]; andthe Italian BDG [1974]). It can also be“positive,” in the sense of the “Lightwas so strong that Darkness could notmake it disappear” (as in the Spanishtranslations by Casiodoro de Reina[CRE 1960] and Lamadrid et al. [SBE1964]; or the Brazilian translation byAntônio Pereira de Figueiredo [BSB]and DNT in 1999).
John 1:1-5—Darkness and the LightAnd the light shineth in darkness;and the darkness comprehended itnot (KJV).Das Licht scheint in der Finsternis,und die Finsternis hat’s nichtergriffen (LUT 1984).
La luz luce en las tinieblas, perolas tinieblas no la acogieron (SBN1975).
...et la lumière dans les ténèbresluit, et le ténèbres ne l’ont pointsaisie (NTF 1922).
The light shines in the darkness,but the darkness has not under-stood it (NIV 1984).
Das Licht strahlt in der Dunkelheit,aber die Dunkelheit hat sich ihmverschlossen (GNB 1997).
...la luce splende nelle tenebre, male tenebre non l’hanno accolta(BDG 1974).
La luz en las tinieblas resplandece,y las tinieblas no prevalecieroncontra ella (CRE 1960).
...la luz luce en las tinieblas y lastinieblas no la sofocaron (SBE1964).
A luz resplandece nas trevas, e astrevas não prevaleceram contra ela(BSB, no year).
Das Licht macht die Finsternis hell,und die Finsternis hat das Lichtnicht verschluckt (DNT [1999]:The light lightens the darkness, andthe darkness did not swallow thelight [my back-translation]).
Both interpretations are evalua-tive: one is metaphorical (darkness[= the world] and does not under-stand or accept the role of the light [= Jesus]), and the other one takesthe Greek verb literally (the light wasso strong that darkness could notovercome it). The metaphoricalmeaning is rather pessimistic,whereas the literal meaning expressesthe confidence of being victorious inthe end. In our translation, we optedfor the literal and positive meaningbecause: a) biblical language shows ageneral tendency to name things in amore concrete manner than what weare accustomed to; and b) if you wantto attract people to your cause, youwould probably not start by tellingthem that it is not worth the effort inthe first place.
The appellative function isdirected at the receiver’s sensitivityor disposition to react, and aims atinducing the audience to respond in aparticular way. If we want to illus-trate a hypothesis by an example, weappeal to the audience’s previousexperience or knowledge; theintended reaction would be ➡
The ATA Chronicle | March 200336
recognition of something known. Ifwe want to persuade someone to dosomething or to share a particularviewpoint, we appeal to their sensi-tivity, their secret desires.
Example 3Jesus appeals to the disciples’
experience to illustrate his point thattheir Christian way of living must set a“shining” example to non-Christians.
Matthew. 5:14–15 Ye are the light of the world. A citythat is set on a hill cannot be hid.Neither do men light a candle andput it under a bushel, but on a can-dlestick; and it giveth light unto allthat are in the house (KJV).
You are like light for the wholeworld. A city built on a hill cannotbe hid. No one lights a lamp andputs it under a bowl; instead it isput on the lampstand, where itgives light for everyone in thehouse (TEV 1992).
The first example (the city on thehill) is rather general and will workwith any reader who knows the dif-ference between hills and plains. Thesecond example cannot achieve itsappellative function if the reader doesnot know what a bushel is or what itlooks like. The dictionary tells us thatbushel is a “biblical” word referringto “a measure, esp. of grain; about36.5 litres” (cf. DCE 1978), but sincethe utterance is not meant to offerinformation about a culture wherebushels obviously belonged to thenormal equipment of a household,this definition is not very helpful.Therefore, TEV (1992) replaces thebushel with a bowl, which makes theappellative function perfectly clear.
The phatic function is meant toestablish the contact between sender
and receiver, keep it alive, end it, anddefine the social relationship holdingbetween the communicating parties. Itrelies particularly on the conventionalforms used for phatic communicationin a culture (e.g., the forms of addressused between persons representing cer-tain social roles, or conventionalopening and closing formulas in lettersor at the beginning or end of a lecture).
Example 4
Philippians 1:1–2Paul and Timotheus ... to all thesaints in Christ Jesus which are atPhilippi... (KJV)
From Paul and Timothy, servantsof Christ Jesus—To all God’speople in Philippi who are in unionwith Christ Jesus... (TEV 1992)
Paulus und Timotheus ... schreibendiesen Brief an alle Christen inPhilippi... (DNT [1999]: Paul andTimotheus...are writing this letterto all the Christians at Philippi...[my back-translation])
The passage above shows a saluta-tion formula which is typical of SaintPaul’s letters. He addresses the mem-bers of the Christian community as“saints in Christ Jesus,” which means“people belonging to Jesus” or, moresimply: Christians. The translatorcould, of course, decide to use modernforms of salutation, beginning theletter with something like “DearChristians at Philippi...” and ending by“Yours faithfully/Best regards/Takecare...Paul and Timothy.” Anotherpossibility, which was used in DNT(1999), is to establish a kind of “intra-biblical” convention by using thesame formula in all the letters. Thisoption makes it easier to avoid themodern forms of address as well.
Spanish and German translators haveto choose between the formal thirdperson Sie/usted(es) and the informalsecond person (singular: du/tú; plural:ihr/vosotros). Modern missionaries(writing in German!) would probablynot treat their addressees using theinformal forms of address. But inBible translation, it has become con-ventional not to modernize the textsby using the formal address.
By way of conclusion, I would liketo mention one more aspect of func-tional text analysis. Except for somepurely phatic expressions or utterances(like smalltalk about the weatherbetween persons who meet for the firsttime in a train compartment or at aparty), texts are rarely monofunctional.As a rule, we find hierarchies of pur-poses that can be identified byanalysing verbal and/or nonverbalfunction markers. To illustrate this lastpoint, let us take a look at the “NewJerusalem” as described by Saint Johnthe Divine in the Book of Revelations(or Apocalypse). All the translations Ihave looked at give more or less thesame description, which is a “faithful”rendering of the Greek original.
Example 5
Revelations 21,10:18–21 The wall was made of jasper, andthe city itself was made of puregold, as clear as glass. The foundation-stones of the city wallwere adorned with all kinds of pre-cious stones. The first foundation-stone was jasper, the secondsapphire, the third agate, the fourthemerald, the fifth onyx, the sixthcarnelian, the seventh yellowquartz, the eighth beryl, the ninthtopaz, the tenth chalcedony, theeleventh turquoise, the twelfthamethyst. The twelve gates weretwelve pearls; each gate was made
What About Functions(s) in Bible Translation? Continued
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 37
from a single pearl. The street ofthe city was of pure gold, trans-parent as glass (GNB 1976).
One of the purposes of this passageis certainly a referential-descriptiveone. Saint John sees the city in avision and describes it to his readers.The referential function of this rathertechnical description works quitewell for most readers, and certainlybest for those with a knowledge ofprecious and semiprecious stones.But apart from the referential pur-pose, the author may have had theintention to express his admirationfor the city he has seen.
Asked about their associations whenreading or listening to the text, mostpeople answer that they are thinking ofthe enormous value represented by thegold and the stones. This, again, is arather modern perspective. We mightwonder why a follower of Jesus, whoshowed so much contempt for “theworld” and its riches himself, wouldprecisely describe his vision of the“new creation” as something so rich inmaterial terms. Precisely the greatvariety of different stones would seemto suggest that perhaps the author’sfocus might have been rather on thecolors than on the value. On thegrounds of the assumption that hisaddressees knew the colors of all thestones he is describing, he need notmention the colors explicitly. But if amodern translator wants her or histarget audience to share the author’sadmiration of the beauty and colorful-ness of his vision, they would have toexplicitate what is implicit in the text.
Die Stadtmauer ist aus Jaspis erbaut,die Stadt selbst aus glasreinem Gold.Die Fundamente der Stadtmauersind von großer Schönheit, denn siebestehen aus verschiedenfarbenenEdelsteinen. Das erste Fundament
ist aus grünlichem Jaspis, daszweite aus blauem Saphir, das dritteaus rotem Chalzedon, das vierte aushellgrünem Smaragd, das fünfte ausrotbraunem Sardonyx, das sechsteaus gelbrotem Carneol, das siebteaus goldgelbem Chrysolit, dasachte aus meergrünem Beryll, dasneunte aus gelbglänzendem Topas,das zehnte aus goldgrün schim-merndem Chrysopras, das elfte ausdunkelrotem Hyazinth, das zwölfteaus purpurnem Amethyst. Diezwölf Tortürme sind zwölf Perlen,jeder Torturm besteht aus einereinzigen Perle, und die Hauptstraßeder Stadt ist aus glasreinem Gold[DNT 1999, 386].
The city wall is made of jasper, andthe city itself of gold that is as pureas glass. The foundations of the citywall are of great beauty, for theyare built out of precious stones inmany different colours. The firstfoundation-stone is jasper, thesecond blue sapphire, the third redagate, the fourth light greenemerald, the fifth reddish brownonyx, the sixth yellowish red car-nelian, the seventh yellow-goldquartz, the eighth beryl as green asthe sea, the ninth shining yellowtopaz, the tenth chalcedony, shim-mering green-golden, the eleventhdeep red turquoise, the twelfthpurple amethyst. The twelve gatesare twelve pearls, each gate ismade from a single pearl. The mainstreet of the city is of gold as pureas glass [my back-translation].
Here it becomes clear that the text has also an expressive-evaluativeor emotive function apart from the ref-erential one. But even the expressivepurpose may not be the most importantone. The vision of the New Jerusalemis presented at the end of last book of
the Christian Bible, following the hor-rors of the apopcalypse, and it seems tobe the absolute culmination of theChristian message. We may assume,therefore, that there is also an appella-tive purpose underlying the text, sincethe New Jerusalem presents the ideal ofGod’s new creation, for which a largenumber of martyrs through historywere prepared to give their lives.
An appellative intention cannot becarried out by a technical description—for this purpose, we definitely need toknow the colors. But in this case, weare faced with the problem of the cul-ture-specificity of aesthetic values. Atanother occasion when I presented thisexample, one listener (from Finland)remarked that our translation remindedhim of “Disneyland”—too many dif-ferent colors, too much light. AGerman girl said she did not find theNew Jerusalem very attractive becauseit seemed so cold to her with all thegold and precious stones, not“gemütlich” (an untranslatable conceptdenoting warmth and coziness).Whereas, when I presented theexample at a conference in SouthAfrica recently, the audience enthusi-astically agreed on the beauty of thepicture. One colleague said he wasreminded of the colors of the rainbow.Almost the same precious stones areused with reference to the Garden ofEden in Ezekiel (28:13). Maybe thelove for “loud” colors is associatedwith hot climate and spicy food (justremember the colorful attire of theLatin American Indians)?
The examples here show that thethree functions (referential, expres-sive, and appellative) are interlinked,but that they can be analyzed from areceiver’s point of view. The skopos, orintended function, of DNT (1999) wasnot to “take the text to the reader,” inSchleiermacher’s terms, but to “bridgethe gap” between the two cultures ➡
The ATA Chronicle | March 200338
by making the source culture accessibleto the target-culture readership withouttaking its “strangeness” or “otherness”away. This skopos can be paraphrasedas “Otherness Understood,” and all thedecisions that were taken during thetranslation process were geared to thisoverall purpose.
ReferencesBühler, Karl. 1934. Sprachtheorie,
Jena: Fischer.
Jakobson, Roman. 1960. Linguisticsand Poetics. In: Thomas A.Sebeok (ed.): Style in Language.Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press,350-377.
Nord, Christiane. 1997. Translating asa Purposeful Activity. FunctionalistApproaches Explained. Manchester:St. Jerome.
Nord, Christiane. 2001. Dealing withPurposes in Intercultural Commu-nication: Some MethodologicalConsiderations. In: Revista Alican-tina de Estudios Ingleses. 14:2001,151-166.
Bible TranslationsBDG. 1974. La Bibbia di Geru-
salemme. Testo biblico di La SacraBibbia della CEI; note e commentidi La Bible de Jerusalem, nuovaedizione. 1973 (Paris: Editions du
Cerf), edizione italiana e addatta-menti a cura di un gruppo di bib-listi italiani sotto la direzione di F.Vattioni, Bologna: Centro Editor-iale Dehoniano.
BSB. 1982. Bíblia Sagrada. Trad.Mateus Hoepers. Petrópolis(Brazil): Editora Vozes.
BSB. (no year). Biblia Sagrada.Transl. by Antônio Pereira deFigueiredo. Difusão Cultural doLivro, Brazil: Cremagrafic S.A.
CRE. 1960. El Nuevo Testamento denuestro Señor Jesucristo. AntiguaVersión de Casiodoro de Reina(1569). Rev. 1960.
DNT. 1999. Das Neue Testament undfrühchristliche Schriften. Neu über-setzt und kommentiert von KlausBerger und Christiane Nord.Frankfurt a.M.: Insel Verlag.
GNB. 1997. Gute Nachricht Bibel.Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesell-schaft (CD-ROM).
KJV. (no year). The King JamesVersion of the Holy BibleContaining the Old and NewTestaments. Translation out of theoriginal tongues and with theformer translations diligentlycompared and revised by His
Majesty’s special command.Cambridge: University Press.
LUT. 1984. Die Bibel. nach der Über-setzung Martin Luthers. Rev.1984, Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibel-gesellschaft.
NIV. 1984. New Testament. New Inter-national Version. InternationalBible Society, Colorado Springsetc. 1984.
NTF. 1922. Les Livres du NouveauTestament. Traduits du Grec enFrançais par Alfred Loisy. Paris:Émile Nourry.
SBE. 1964. La Santa Biblia.Traducida de los textos originales[al español] por Antonio G.Lamadrid, Juan FranciscoHernández, Evaristo Martín Nieto,Manuel Revuelta Sañudo. 18a edi-ción, Madrid: Ediciones Paulinas.
SBN. 1975. Sagrada Biblia. Versióndirecta de las lenguas originalespor Eloíno Nácar Fuster y AlbertoColunga. O.P., 4a edición (1a ed.1970), Madrid: Editorial Católica(Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos).
TEV. 1992. Today’s English Versionof the New Testament. New York:American Bible Society.
What About Functions(s) in Bible Translation? Continued
understand what is going on. It is thepresider’s duty to make it clear toyou, and to everyone, where theassembly is in the proceedings, andwhat the significance of a vote willbe. Don’t hesitate to use the veryhandy point of information to askwhat exactly is going on, or what the
result of a pending vote will be. Allyou have to do is say, loudly enoughto be heard, “point of information!”The presider, if she knows her busi-ness, will clarify the confusionpatiently and without condescension.It is no shame to be uncertain—eventhe presider sometimes will be in that
state—and you will do everyone afavor by making sure that the busi-ness is clear to all. When order andclarity reign, a meeting is far morelikely to fulfill its purpose and leaveeveryone satisfied that the work hasbeen well done.
Jurassic Parliament Continued from p. 27
Summary of ATA’s Translation and Interpreting Compensation SurveyBy Shawn Six
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 39
The recently released second editionof ATA’s Translation and Inter-preting Compensation Survey
should prove to be an invaluable bench-marking tool for nearly everyone in oraffiliated with the translation and inter-preting profession. The study isdesigned to allow an individual or com-pany to easily compare their compen-sation levels to their peers. In addition,the study serves as a practical tool for abroader audience. Companies involvedin translation and interpreting willcommonly refer to this report whenevaluating independent contractors orin-house staff, and determining theircompetitiveness with respect to com-pensation. It is also a useful tool forcompanies that are looking to establishcompensation or hourly rate ranges.Students who are considering careersin the translation and interpreting pro-fession can use this tool to steer theirspecific career decisions, and to gaininsight about the potential compensa-tion that they may earn.
The survey was compiled, tabu-lated, and prepared for ATA byIndustry Insights, Inc., a professionalresearch and consulting firm providing
management and marketing servicesto dealer organizations, individualmembership organizations, and tradeprofessional associations and theirmembers. The company specializesin compensation and benefits studies,industry operating surveys, memberneeds studies, educational programs,and customized research activities.
An e-mail containing a link to anonline questionnaire was distributedto approximately 12,000 ATA mem-bers and nonmembers in August
2002. In total, 1,621 completed it anduseable survey forms were submitteddirectly to Industry Insights, Inc. Thisrepresents a response rate of 14%.Forms received after the final
deadline and questionnaires withincomplete information were notincluded.
Upon receipt, all information waschecked both manually and by a spe-cially designed computer editing pro-cedure. Strict confidence of surveyresponses was maintained throughoutthe course of the project. Final resultswere tabulated, and the report wascompleted in January 2003. In addi-tion, ATA’s attorney reviewed the finalpublication.
The seven employment classifica-tions analyzed in this report include:full-time independent contractors; part-time independent contractors; full-timein-house private sector personnel; part-time in-house private sector personnel;company owners; educators; and gov-ernment employees. For detailedanalysis, responses were broken downby geographic region, education, yearsof employment, primary languagecombination, ATA membership status,and ATA accreditation status. Thiscomprehensive survey allows users tocompare their own income, hourlyrates, and rates per word to individualsin similar situations.
“…The study is designedto allow an individual or
company to easilycompare their
compensation levels totheir peers…”
$54,341
Government Employee
Educator
Translation and Interpreting Company Owner
Part-time Independent Contractor
Full-time Independent Contractor
Part-time In-house Private Sector
Full-time In-house Private Sector
$20,724
$55,296
$16,331
$69,591
$34,336
$41,588
Figure 1: 2001 Average Gross Income* By Employment Classification (U.S.-Based Respondents)
*Income from translation and interpreting only.
➡
The ATA Chronicle | March 200340
Some of the key findings of thesurvey follow:
Income Varied by EmploymentClassification. As Figure 1 on page 39shows, 2001 gross income from trans-lation and interpreting varied byemployment classification. T&I com-pany owners reported the highestaverage gross income, at $69,591. Thelowest income was reported by part-time independent contractors, at$16,331.
Years of Employment Makes aDifference. Gross 2001 income from
translation and interpreting showed adirect relationship with years ofemployment. In general, those withmore experience earned moreincome. Using the full-time inde-pendent contractor as an example,Figure 2 shows the impact that yearsof experience had on gross income.For instance, full-time independentcontractors with 0 to 5 years of expe-rience earned an average grossincome of $30,090 in 2001, com-pared to $64,234 for those with 21 ormore years of experience. In general,this pattern existed in all of theemployment classifications.
U.S.-Based Respondents EarnedMore Than Those Based Outsidethe U.S. For example, full-time in-house private sector personnel basedin the U.S. earned an average gross2001 income from translation andinterpreting of $54,341, compared toonly $36,227 for those based outsidethe U.S. (see Figure 3).
ATA Accreditation Counts. Respon-dents who were ATA-accredited earnedsignificantly more gross income thanthose who were not ATA-accredited.Using the full-time independent con-tractor as an example, Figure 4 showsthe impact that ATA accreditation hadon gross income. Those with ATAaccreditation earned nearly 16% morethan their non-accredited counterparts($59,760 vs. $51,609).
Rates Per Word and Hourly Rates.At an average of $0.23 per word, thelanguage combination commandingthe highest rate per word was Englishinto Chinese. Other language combina-tions commanding higher than averagerates were Chinese into English($0.19), English into Japanese ($0.18),and English into Arabic ($0.17).
Similarly, the highest averagehourly rates by language combinationwere English into Chinese ($59.15),Chinese into English ($57.68),Japanese into English ($53.37), andEnglish into Japanese ($49.59).
Trends. Half of the respondentsreported that their 2001 gross incomefrom translation and interpretingincreased when compared to 2000.The remaining 50% were closelysplit between those reporting adecrease (26%) and those reportingno change (24%).
Education and Experience. Threeout of four respondents had achieved
21 years or more
16 to 20 years
11 to 15 years
6 to 10 years
0 to 5 years $30,090
$56,920
$50,828
$65,031
$64,234
Figure 2: Full-Time Independent Contractor 2001 Average Gross Income* ByYears of Employment (U.S.-Based Respondents)
*Income from translation and interpreting only.
Non-U.S.-Based
U.S.-Based $54,341
$36,227
Figure 3: Full-Time In-House Private Sector Personnel Average Gross Income*By U.S. vs. Non-U.S.-Based Respondents (U.S. Dollars)
*Income from translation and interpreting only.
Summary of ATA’s Translation and Interpreting Compensation Survey Continued
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 41
either a master’s degree (41%) or abachelor’s degree (34%). Nearly one-fifth reported having a degree in trans-lation, while nearly 10% reportedhaving a degree in interpreting. Thirtypercent reported having a non-degreecertification in translation, while 19%reported having a non-degree certifi-cation in interpreting. Other creden-tials reported included courtcertification (12%), passing the StateDepartment exam (8%), and passingthe UN exam (1%).
Areas of Specialization. The mostcommon areas of specializationreported were business/finance (56%),law (47%), entertainment (47%), andindustry and technology (40%). Non-common areas of specializationincluded pure sciences (10%), naturalsciences (16%), and engineering (17%).
Translation Speed. The averagerespondent reported a translationspeed in target words per hour at 510.Average translation speeds ranged
from 382 to 618, depending on theemployment classification.
Ordering Information. ATA’s 48-pageTranslation and Interpreting Compen-sation Survey presents the survey resultsin much greater detail than is possible inthis summary article. The completereport includes charts and tables thatprovide a detailed profile of each of theseven employment classifications men-tioned in this article. It is important toremember that the statistics publishedby ATA should be regarded as merelythe results of the survey rather thanabsolute standards. ATA intends for thesurvey to reveal general tendencies inthe industry, not exact amounts.
The full report is available to ATAmembers for $45 and $60 to nonmem-bers. Please contact ATA to order yourcopy: ATA, 225 Reinekers Lane, Suite590, Alexandria, VA 22314; Tel: (703)683-6100; Fax: (703) 683-6122,e-mail: [email protected].
Non-ATA-Accredited
ATA-Accredited $59,760
$51,609
Figure 4: Full-Time Independent Contractor 2001 Average Gross Income* By Accreditation Status (U.S.-Based Respondents)
*Income from translation and interpreting only.
Call for Submissions: Global Talk
Global Talk, the newsletter of the International Communication Special Interest Group (SIG) of the Society for TechnicalCommunication (STC), is looking for feature articles on intercultural communication for its upcoming issues.
Features should be short (250-500 word) essays, commentaries, or articles on issues dealing with:▼ Culture and communication;▼ Culture and design practices;▼ Technology and intercultural communication;▼ Translation and localization concepts and practices; and▼ Interactions involving clients and co-workers from other cultures.
Individuals interested in either submitting feature articles or proposing/discussing ideas for feature articles should contactKirk St. Amant at [email protected].
The ATA Chronicle | March 200342
Survey on Understanding Emerging Work Arrangements
Baruch College is conducting a study of translators and interpreters to increase our knowledge of why people choose differentwork arrangements. Professionals in the T&I industry exemplify the modern “knowledge worker,” and understanding the factorsthat influence their lives and careers will help us understand how they affect people working in the “new economy.”
Packets containing questionnaires were given or mailed to all ATA conference registrants. We wish to include peopleengaged in all aspects of the T&I profession: employees of all types of organizations (private, government, nonprofit, etc.),freelancers, managers, agency owners, etc. The results will serve as a basis for articles in the academic and practitioner press(and will be shared with participants).
We thank the many people who have already responded. If you attended the Atlanta conference and have the questionnaire,we hope you will complete it and mail it in. If you don’t have a questionnaire, please e-mail [email protected] andone will be sent by e-mail or regular mail as you prefer.
David ProttasTel: (646) 312 3666 [email protected]
Language Line Services, one of thelargest providers of over-the-phone lan-guage interpreting services, announcesthe launch of Language Line UniversitySM,making interpreter testing and trainingprograms available to Language Linecustomers.
In line with their primary service,these testing and training programs areconducted over-the-phone to better facil-itate the satisfaction of clients’ needs, aswell as to coordinate more readily withthe staff’s demanding schedules. Initiallyused to evaluate and train their owninterpreters, Language Line University’stesting and training programs were sub-sequently expanded to respond to thefrequent and increasing requests fromcustomers needing to assess the linguis-tic and interpreting skills of their ownbilingual staff for competency in bothEnglish and their target language.
Since it is difficult for organizations to self-train and assess their staff
interpreters and bilingual employees inevery language that they serve, the pro-grams offered through Language LineUniversity provide customers with a com-prehensive, highly effective, and stream-lined method of accomplishing this nec-essary task. Language Line Universityprograms, backed by the company’s morethan 20 years of experience and leader-ship in the telephonic interpreting field,can be used by organizations to ensurethat their staff members are providing theinterpreter accuracy and quality demand-ed by today’s multilingual market.
Traditional staff interpreter testingand training costs organizations consid-erable time and expense, requiring aca-demic program involvement or on-sitetesting and training program administra-tors. Organizations can save valuabletime and resources by enrolling theirstaff through the more efficient telephon-ic testing and training format offered byLanguage Line University.
Language Line University testing serv-ices are designed to evaluate the skills ofbilingual individuals in a variety of indus-tries, including insurance, finance, andmedical. These tests can be used toassess the linguistic proficiency of bilin-gual staff, screen new interpreters for hir-ing purposes, and evaluate staff inter-preters’ existing knowledge of industryterminology. Following the assessments,an evaluation of each test candidate’s levelof competency is provided to the organi-zation. Managers can then use this valu-able feedback to measure their overalllevel of service toward the ever-growingmultilingual markets, and make adjust-ments to improve those service levelsbased on the results and recommenda-tions.
To learn more about this program,visit Language Line Services atwww.languageline.com, or call 1- 877-351-6636.
Language Line Graduates to a Whole New Degree of Service
Introducing Language Line UniversitySM
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 43
No Mystery: Clear, Concise, and Coherent Translations Rate High with Investors
The Onionskin is a client education column launched by the ITI Bulletin (a publication of the U.K.’s Institute ofTranslation and Interpreting) in 1996. Comments and leads for future columns are very welcome; please include fullcontact details. Contact: [email protected] or fax +33 1 43 87 70 45.
The Onionskin By Chris Durban
“S tyle-wise, I’m looking forAgatha Christie, notVirginia Woolf,” said CIC
Asset Management’s Edouard Manset,presenting his translation priorities at around table of industry professionals inJuly 2002. Similarly, this Frenchbanker urges his management team totake their lead from Henri Troyat andnot Marcel Proust when writing docu-ments in the original French.
Translators present breathed a sighof relief.
CIC Asset Management developsspecialized investment funds in Paris,and views expert translation ofrelated documentation as an essentialstep in reaching investors in marketsfrom Singapore to Saskatchewan.
“When we commission a transla-tion, our aim is simple: we wantclients to invest in our funds,” saidManset, who urged linguists targetinghis market to keep the big picture inmind at all times. Not that they canforget the details: “Banking is abroad field with many sub-sectors.We expect translators to fully masterany area they work in; it’s a seriousproblem if they don’t.”
Yet once translators have thesebasics under their belt, they have animportant role to play, says Manset.Their input—above and beyond theirwork on the text itself—helps him andhis team fine-tune both originals (inFrench) and foreign language versions.
One French brochure, for instance,featured a full page of awards won bytop-performing CIC AM funds inFrance. But readers in Hong Kongwere unfamiliar with the nominatingbodies and prizes, so at the translator’ssuggestion this was reduced to a briefreference to “many awards.” Else-where, a playful title with a nod at KarlMarx and investment advice in early
spring (Mars, l’accumulation primitivedu capital) was replaced by a simpler“Make hay while the sun shines.”
For this type of decision, notesManset, a dialogue between buyerslike himself and translators is essential.
But even skilled suppliers can tripup if they do not have access to all rel-evant information. Once, he recalled,a British translator pondered long andhard before rendering zéro pointé as“out for a duck,” a cricket term. Greatwordplay, says anglophile Manset,but unlikely to fly with readers inArizona whose favorite sport is base-ball. He summarized his own priori-ties as “the three Cs”: concision,clarté, and cohérence.
For clients like CIC AssetManagement, expert translators areinvaluable allies. “We count on youto help us break through both lan-guage and cultural barriers,” Mansettold his audience.
Common Currency Campaign:Complex and Compelling
With a print run of 200 million,it’s better to get it right the first timearound.
In the run-up to the launch of eurobanknotes and coins in January2002, the European Central Bankproduced what may be one of thelargest single print runs of any EUdocument—a brochure entitled “TheEuro, Our Money,” aimed at house-holds throughout the euro zone.
At the same July round table,press officer Jean Rodriguez of theEuropean Central Bank discussedthe euro campaign and ECB priori-ties, echoing Edouard Manset’sinsistence on the importance oftranslator/client exchanges.
Experience had taught him, he said,to be wary of “translators who leave
you in peace, who don’t call or ask anyquestions, who carry on as if every-thing were crystal clear, and limit theirinput to sending you back a textwithout any queries or suggestions.”
“I have rarely received good trans-lations from suppliers using thatapproach,” insisted Mr. Rodriguez,noting that as the euro brochureproject proceeded, coordination oftranslations was transferred back tothe bank from the communicationsagency initially contracted to com-mission foreign language texts. Thequality was simply not sufficient; toomany questions got lost along theway—or perhaps were never asked inthe first place.
The project highlights the impor-tance of text purpose and targetreaders. Many, if not most, ECBpress releases are market sensitive.When ECB President WimDuisenberg speaks, press and finan-cial markets weigh every word, ana-lyzing syntax and vocabulary toidentify possible shifts in centralbank policy. Translators must adherestrictly to established phrasing andnuance, and the utmost care must betaken to ensure that no language ver-sion gives out more (or less) informa-tion than another. Nor is drawing indiscretionary readers really the point.Those who want and need to knowwill make it their business to dissectthe text distributed, and get back tothe source with any questions.
Not so the brochure. This time, says Rodriguez, the
bank was intent on promoting its coinsand banknotes to a completely dif-ferent target audience—some 300million consumers throughout thefuture euro zone. Few of these readerstrack pronouncements on central bankand monetary policy, but all ➡
The ATA Chronicle | March 200344
would soon be dealing day to daywith the new currency. The challengewas to speak to them in their own lan-guage, er, 11 languages.
Bank staff thus reexamined anddiscarded from the source text muchof the jargon that inevitably creepsinto discussions among specialists.ECB acronyms were the first to go,followed by terms and conceptscoined for bank use with market pro-fessionals. Example: “eurosystem,”referring to the ECB and the nationalcentral banks in the euro zone (not tobe confused with the Europeansystem of central banks, since not allcountries in the European Union haveadopted the euro).
Alongside the brochure, the banklaunched a competition and poster forprimary schools throughout the eurozone. Seven million copies wereprinted. Here, too, translations weretailored to readers and reflected con-straints, including regional variationsin the 11 official languages: 5 dif-ferent posters were produced inGerman (for Germany, Austria,Luxembourg, German-speakingBelgium, and German-speakingItaly), and 3 in French (for France,Belgium, and Luxembourg).
By all accounts the campaignhelped raise awareness of languageissues further at the ECB, confirmingfor Jean Rodriguez and his colleaguesthe fact that quality in translation isimpossible without dialogue.
Literature in translation: whodunit?“An unintentional omission,” was
how Waterstone’s publicity managerdescribed this leading U.K. book-seller’s failure to name translators in a22-page celebration of literature intranslation back in 1998. At the time,Honor Wilson-Fletcher seemed trulycontrite: “It was a gaffe we wouldobviously rather have avoided, but wewill correct the omissions in anyreprint we undertake, and we continueto support writing in translation as amatter of course,” she told TheOnionskin (ITI Bulletin, August 1998).
Ms. Wilson-Fletcher has movedon, but the policy she somewhat belat-edly espoused is, alas, nowhere insight in issue 6 of the otherwise excel-lent Waterstone’s Books Quarterly. Inan article entitled “A World of Books”(pages 34-36), the magazine ravesabout “the 30 translated works youmust read” and goes on to list thesewith plot summaries, thumbnailphotos of book jackets, and maps ofthe authors’ home countries. Yet, as in1998, the translators have not beeninvited to the party. Not a single nameappears to remind readers of preciselywho crafted the prose that makesthese books accessible to English-speaking readers. Works featured are,of course, English-language transla-tions of the originals.
When we called, Waterstone’s lit-erary editor Martin Higgs cited spaceconstraints. He noted, too, that
Waterstone’s takes its lead from pub-lishers: “We are unlikely to push forgreater credit to be given to transla-tors in promotional materials meantfor a general public, though, ofcourse, were publishers to ask us todo so we would.”
A clause in the standard TA(Translators Association, an offshootof the U.K. Authors’ Society servingliterary translators) contract stipu-lates that the translator’s name mustappear on books as well as in all cat-alogues and commercial materials.Which leads us to wonder whetherWaterstone’s might simply have for-gotten—easy to do, says one critic,when translators themselves seem sointent on staying in the shadows.
At any rate, Mr. Higgs defendsWaterstone’s record of on-going sup-port for non-English language fictionover many years, in contrast to whathe calls a “total lack of support forthe same from any of our Britishcompetitor booksellers.”
That support is certainly appreci-ated, although translator credits inamongst the maps, book-jacketphotos, and blurbs would seem littleto ask in an article celebrating worksin translation.
Thanks to Bob Blake, Ros Schwartz, andPat Walton.
The Onionskin Continued
This is an intensive course in the practice of simultaneous conference interpretation. The following topics will becovered: general and technical subjects; specialized topics (consecutive; on-sight translation; the use and prepara-tion of texts; booth and stress management; marketing and negotiation; interpreting approaches to Shakespeareand the Bible, etc.). For information, a detailed course brochure, and application forms, please contact:Christopher Guichot de Fortis, Tel: (+32-2) 654-2080; Fax: (+32-2) 652-5826; E-mail: [email protected].
2003 Cambridge Conference Interpretation Course • Cambridge, England • August 17-30
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 45
Diccionario Científico y TécnicoInglés-Español y Español-InglésAuthor:Ing. Químico Virgilio González y PozoPlaya Roqueta 210-A, Col. ReformaIztaccíhuatlDel. Iztacalco, CP 08830Tel. y Fax 56 33 38 [email protected] date: May 2002Price: $60 (CD-ROM)
Reviewed by: Gerardo Konig
T he Diccionario Científico y Téc-nico Inglés-Español y Español-Inglés has, according to Mr. Ing.
Químico Virgilio González y Pozo,7,470 pages and 386,066 entries. It isa very uncommon product in that it iscurrently not being sold through apublisher. The author has entered intoan agreement with AC&Associates inCanada and WorldMagicSoft in CostaRica to include this dictionary in theirown listings. There is currently noISBN, and the author has the copy-right in Mexico with number 03-2002-052812084600-01. If youwant to purchase a copy, Ing. QuímicoVirgilio González y Pozo sells the CDsfor $60, mailed through registeredpost. Interested parties have to contacthim by e-mail. The author has not indi-cated what fields his work covers, justthat it is “Científico y Técnico.”
Not knowing exactly what subjectsit covers, it is not possible to knowwhat is a “filler word” or not, but onewould not expect to find “papá” or“mama” in a dictionary of this type,but they are there (unfortunately),along with the rest of the family(nieto, tío, abuelo, abuela, etc.)!
Before starting the review, we dis-cussed with Boris Silversteyn andSharlee Merner Bradley if this wouldbe something that should be reviewedby ATA at all. We concluded that thereally important questions to answerare: Is it worth the price? Is it useful?Will it help me?
Forget the shiny and brilliantlycolorful brochures in a nice box! I gota CD that looks like the one my soncopies his music on, nothing more,nothing less. In the CD there are twohuge Word files, one with theSpanish→English dictionary, theother with the English→Spanish dic-tionary. One is 18,127 KB, the other17,789 KB. Once you have copied thefiles onto your hard drive, you canopen the files in Word and start.
No fancy interface here either. Inthe Routledge Spanish TechnicalDictionary, I can enter, for example,“ductwork” or “duct-work,” and theinterface will show me the entry for“duct work.” Try this using the “find”function of Word, and you will findnothing. Remember, you have toenter the right word, spelled exactlyas the entry, or you will not find whatyou are looking for. With time (notmuch), you will develop the neces-sary search skills, as you do whenyou start to use a paper dictionary orsearch on the Internet. My firstsearch, for no particular reason, wasfor the word “recorder.” Well, I found68 compound words that included“recorder” before I got to the plain“recorder” I was looking for. Thiswill slow you down in someinstances, but it also allows you tosearch compound words by searchingfor only part of the word (you cannotdo this with the Routledge dictionaryon CD, and, of course, you cannot dothis in a paper dictionary!)
I used this dictionary for a month inthe areas of mechanical engineering,water treatment, and telecommunica-tions, among others. Normally, I havethe Routledge Technical Dictionary onmy desktop. I have now added theDiccionario Científico y Técnico. If theword I’m looking up is not found inthese two dictionaries, I move to theDiccionario Politécnico (Atienza),then to the Diccionario Enciclopédicode Términos Técnicos (Javier Collazo),and finally to the Diccionario paraIngenieros (Luis A. Robb).
Out of these five dictionaries, onlyCollazo will, in some cases, explainto you what the word means. Theother dictionaries will just tell youthe equivalent in the other language.As an example, I searched for“antenna feeder.”
Collazo: Antenna feeder: alimen-tador de antena. Sistema conductorque mantiene la energía de radiofre-cuencia del aparato transmisor a laantena, sin ocasionar radiación nipérdidas de consideración.
Routledge, on the other hand, will, inmost cases, and where applicable,give a detail of the fields where theterm is used. For example, if yousearch for “subscriber”:
Subscriber: n COMP&DP abonado m, afiliado
m, suscriptor m ELEC abonado m, afiliado m TELECOM abonado m, afiliado
m, subscriptor m, titular de unabono m
TV abonado m, afiliado m
Another interesting piece of infor-mation is that Routledge and Robbwill tell you if the word is f or m.
Silversteyn is chair of the ATA Dictionary Review Committee.
Dictionary Reviews Compiled by Boris Silversteyn
➡
The ATA Chronicle | March 200346
Dictionary Reviews Continued
Atienza, Collazo, and González yPozo are not going to help you here.
Table 1 shows the quantity ofentries found for the words startingwith: antenna, anvil, aperture, pump,solution, and water. It gives an ideahow González y Pozo’s dictionarycompares with the others in terms ofthe number of entries. This is withoutany doubt a big dictionary. In allcases, it has more entries than Robband Routledge, and in all cases butone, it has more entries for thesewords than Collazo.
Some of the things that could beimproved are the repeated entries,such as:subscriber: abonado, suscriptor, titular.subscriber: suscriptor.subscriber’s premise network,
SPN: red del suscriptor.subscriber’s premise network,
SPN: red del suscriptor.Subsidiary Communications
Authorization, SCA:Autorización de ComunicacionesSubsidiarias.
Subsidiary CommunicationsAuthorization, SCA:Autorización de ComunicacionesSubsidiarias.
I found some typos:“sheingling hatchet: hachela para
tejamaní” (it is actually ashin-gling hatchet)
“shell shick: choque (psicológico) debombardeo” (shell shock, mostlikely)
Some inconsistencies:Since the author is from Mexico, one
can expect him to use “hule” to translate“rubber.” But in some instances he used“goma,” or “hule,” or “caucho,” orsometimes a combination of terms:
rubber hose: manguera de goma.rubber boat: bote de hule.Verson-Wheelon process: proceso
Verson-Wheelon (manufactura decaucho).
rubber band: banda de goma, bandade hule, elástico, liga.
vulcanized rubber: caucho vulcan-izado, hule vulcanizado.
For computer, he uses “computador”in 9 instances, “computadora” in 265,and even “ordenador.”
game playing: juego por ordenador.general-purpose computer: com-
putadora de propósito general.gun data computer: computador de
datos de tiro.
Some things that are (in my humbleopinion) wrong:
rubber file: escofina (the “rubber”part is missing)
cross-trunk: tronco directo (This ismost likely transversal o cruzado.)
climb milling: fresado concurrente,fresado hacia abajo (actually fre-sado hacia arriba)
clock valve: válvula de retención(Válvula de retención is a “checkvalve,” so this might be a typo.)
close and collision warning: alarmameteorológica y anticolisión(This, more likely, is “aviso deproximidad y colisión.)
coding scheme: código. (This is mostlikely “plan de codificación.”)
coarse file: limatón. (The term hasvery limited use. I searched with“Google,”and “lima gruesa” gaveover 2,500 hits and “limatón”only 50. A poor choice of a word.)
Some words are given only onemeaning when they really have many:closet: inodoro (If we translate “He
threw the shoes in the closet” as “Tiró los zapatos en el inodoro,” we mighthave a problem. We can see herethat inodoro is right, but many othermeanings of the word are missing;armario, placard, closet (or clóset),gabinete, retrete, come to mind.)
duct work: canalización (but it alsomeans “conductos” and “red deconductos”)
antenna anvil aperture foot pump solution water
Atienza 158 28 26 142 125 33 559
Collazo 148 2 16 29 26 3 225
Gonzalez y Pozo 66 13 18 66 72 33 376
Robb 8 11 2 33 16 4 131
Routledge 11 5 20 33 48 6 254
Table 1
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 47
rubbing oil: aceite para borrar(marcas) (Aceite para borrarmarcas is used in “ebanistería,” butit is also “aceite de pulimento.”)
rubber wheel: piedra de goma(esmeril) (Possibly rueda abrasivade caucho/hule/goma, but alsorueda de caucho/hule/goma.)
log-in: registro a la entrada (This alsomeans “iniciar session,” which iswidely used in computing.)
On the other hand, I found manyentries in this dictionary that I didnot find anywhere else:subtransient time-constant on
single-phase short-circuit: con-stante subtransitoria de tiempo encortocircuito monofásico.
billfish: pez pico.Wright’s inbreeding coefficient:
coeficiente de endogamia deWright.
endless-loop tape recorder:grabadora de cinta sin fin.
electrostatically focused traveling-wave tube: tubo de ondas via-jeras de enfoque electrostático.
electron-energy-loss spectroscopy:espectroscopia de impacto deelectrones, espectroscopia de pér-dida de energía de electrones.
electrohydrodynamic ionizationmass spectroscopy: espectro-scopia de masas mediante ion-ización electrohidrodinámica.
And for those who used to followMaxwell Smart’s antics from the oldtelevision series Get Smart, in thisdictionary you will find an entry for“cone of silence”; if you do not knowwhat I’m talking about, that’s good….
Another plus of this dictionary isthe chemical terms it includes. Ipicked (randomly) 10 words in myDiccionario de Química e IngenieríaQuímica (Guillermo Etienne), then Ilooked them up in the Diccionario deQuímica (Hawley), and finally in theDiccionario Científico y Técnico. Theresults are in Table 2, and they lookquite promising!
To sum up, a dictionary is a tool.You have to use your tools with care;you have to know what you are doing.
Yes, there are some inaccuracies inthe dictionary, but you will find themin any dictionary.
This particular dictionary stillneeds work, since there are areas thatcan be improved. Nevertheless, it hassaved me time, and with a price of$60, well, it pays for itself quite fast,and since it lives on my hard drive, Ican access it in a snap!
To answer my original questions: Isit worth the price? Is it useful? Will ithelp me? The answer is yes, yes, andyes. I have found in González y Pozo’sdictionary many words that are notfound in other dictionaries, and Ifound it very helpful. Here is some-thing else you can do with it—since itis a giant Word file, you can use it as abase to build on, adding your ownentries (I mark mine with an asterisk atthe end, so I know it is my entry).
Gerardo Konig is a full-time freelance tech-nical ATA-accredited (English→Spanish)translator. Contact: [email protected].
Diccionario de Química e Diccionario de Química (Hawley) Diccionario Científico y TécnicoIngeniería Química (Guillermo Etienne)
Alkyl Found Found
Alkylation Found Found
Cadmium sulphide Found Not found
Cadmium sulphate Found Not found
Cetyl ether Not found Not found
Cetyl laureate Not found Not found
Dioxane Found Found
Hydrofluoric acid Found Found
Nitronenzene Found Found
Tantalum tetroxide Not found Found
Table 2
➡
The ATA Chronicle | March 200348
Spanish Business DictionaryPublisher: Schreiber PublishingPublication date: 2001ISBN: 1-887563-65-2Price: $24.95
Reviewed by: Tom West
Schreiber Publishing, publisher ofthe notoriously inaccurate Multi-cultural Spanish Dictionary, has
done it again: they have published anallegedly “multicultural” SpanishBusiness Dictionary. Incrediblyenough, however, the new businessdictionary is even worse than its pred-ecessor! Schreiber’s strategy is appar-ently to gin up a list of words inEnglish and then have translatorsfrom various countries translate thelist into Spanish. What Schreiberseems not to grasp, however, is thatwords without context are ambiguous.
And sure enough, there are hun-dreds of examples in the SpanishBusiness Dictionary where one of thetranslators understood a word oneway, while a different translatorunderstood it another way. Forexample, “milking,” which in a busi-ness dictionary would be expected tomean “exploiting” or “taking unfairadvantage of” something, is trans-lated as “explotación” in Venezuela,“ordeño” in Mexico, and “lactación”in Argentina! Clearly, only“explotación” is correct. “Ordeño” iswhat you do to a cow, and themeaning of “lactación” is obvious.“Hot issue” is translated by one trans-lator as “asunto de gran importancia”and by another as “emisión de gran
demanda.” The Argentine translatorunderstood “testate” to be a verb(which it’s not), and translated it as“testar.” The Chilean, Mexican, andVenezuelan understood it correctly asan adjective, and came up with thecorrect “testado.” “Networking”(which in a business dictionaryshould probably mean “using con-tacts to obtain more business”) isgiven as “conexión de redes” inMexican Spanish, as “concatenación”or “eslabonamiento” in ArgentineSpanish,” and as “comunicarse através de una red de contactos” inChilean and Venezuelan Spanish.“Double dipping” is translated as“doble inmersión” in MexicanSpanish, as “doble empleo con mirasde obtener dos pensiones” inArgentine Spanish, and as “sacarprovecho dos veces” in ChileanSpanish. The problem with all of thisis that the dictionary implies thatthese are regional variations, when infact they’re simply examples of oneperson understanding a word one wayand another person understanding it adifferent way.
And then there are cases wherenone of the translators understood theEnglish term correctly. For example,“judgment proof,” which means“without the financial resources topay a judgment,” is translated as “evi-dencia del juicio.” Apparently, thetranslators thought that people goaround saying “I’m going to have tosee some judgment proof,” and trans-lated it accordingly. This is, ofcourse, nonsense. “Judgment proof”is an adjective, not a noun. Anotherplace where the dictionary shows itsignorance is under “full faith andcredit,” which is a phrase taken fromthe U.S. Constitution. Article IV pro-vides that “full faith and credit shall
be given in each state to the publicacts, records, and judicial proceed-ings of every other state.” The samephrase appears in Article 121 of theMexican Constitution, where it reads“entera fe y crédito.” The Schreiber,however, translates it as “fidelidad decompromiso y crédito total,” whichreflects neither the meaning of thephrase nor its standard translation inMexican Spanish.
There are numerous other exam-ples of the translators from the var-ious countries understanding theEnglish terms in two different ways.Under “motion study,” which means“a check on the time taken by anemployee to do any particular task inorder to see whether it can be donemore efficiently,” we find both“estudio de movimientos,” which iscorrect, and “estudio de una moción opropuesta,” which reflects a misun-derstanding of the term “motionstudy.” “Loss ratio,” which is an insur-ance term meaning “the percentage oflosses to premiums,” is translated lit-erally as “razón de pérdidas” insteadof the standard “índice de siniestral-idad.” “Hobby loss,” a tax termmeaning “loss from a hobby or otheractivity not pursued for profit,” istranslated as “pérdida de pasatiempo,”which means “loss of a pastime,” not“loss resulting from a pastime.”
The more one reads through thedictionary, the more and more absurdit seems. Here’s a ridiculous entry:law is supposedly “ley” in allSpanish-speaking countries but Chile,where it is “derecho.” Anyone whohas even tried his hand at legal trans-lation knows that both “ley” and“derecho” are standard Spanisheverywhere. “Junior partner” is trans-lated in the book as “socio moderno,”which is truly a weird (and erroneous)
Dictionary Reviews Continued
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 49
way to describe someone who hasjust made partner at a law firm. Thesame translator presumably misun-derstood “inner city,” which essen-tially means the “poor part of town,”translating it as “ciudad del interior.”
On top of these problems, thereare incomplete translations. Forexample, “nonmember bank,” whichrefers to a “depository institution thatis not a member of the FederalReserve System,” is simply translatedas “banco no miembro.” And thenthere are the typical errors that arecommon among inexperienced trans-lators: “vendor” translated as“vendedor” (should be “proveedor”);“act” translated as “acta” (should be“ley”); “statutory” translated as“estatutario” (should be “legal” or“impuesto por ley”); “unincorpo-rated” translated as “sin incorporar”(should be “sin personalidadjurídica”). There are also signs ofawkward Spanish, for example,“tombstone ad” translated as “avisoen periódicos de un ofrecimiento” or“open shop” translated as “empresa lacual emplea sin considerar si el solic-itante es miembro de un gremio.”Mistakes in proofreading occur onpage 52, where “descriptive” isspelled “descpriptive,” and on page92, where the Spanish word“realizar” is spelled “realzar.”
The bottom line is that this bookhas no business (if you’ll pardon thepun) being on the shelf of anyonewho wants to handle Spanish andEnglish professionally.
Dahl’s Law DictionaryDiccionario jurídico DahlSpanish→English/English→SpanishThird editionAuthor: Henry Saint Dahl
Publisher: William S. Hein & Co., BuffaloPublication date: 1999ISBN: 1-57588-496-8Price: $54.95 (Amazon.com)
Reviewed by: Tom West
T he advertising blurbs about thisdictionary make it sound verypromising indeed. It is “an
annotated legal dictionary, includingauthoritative definitions from codes,case law, statutes, legal writing, andlegal opinions from attorneys gen-eral.” Unfortunately, however, itshares many of the problems that Inoted in Dahl’s French legal dic-tionary (June 2002 ATA Chronicle).Like its French counterpart, theSpanish Dahl suffers from manyinstances of tortured translation. Forexample, under “cobro de lo inde-bido,” we read: “If a thing is receivedwhen there was no right to claim itand which, through an error, has beenunduly delivered, there arises an obli-gation to restore the same. A person,who in good faith should haveaccepted a payment of a certain andspecified thing not due, shall only beliable for the impairment or loss ofthe latter and its accessories, in so far[sic] as he may have enriched himselfby it.” I would wager that mostreaders, even ones with legal training,would find that definition pretty hardto follow.
Lamentably, this sort of torturedwriting is not limited to the Spanish-to-English section. On the English-to-Spanish side, under “insidertrading,” we find “En USA las com-
putadoras del mercado de valores estádiseñada para tratar de interceptartales maniobras puesto que puedenprovocar una catástrofe bursátil.”Apparently, someone was not payingvery close attention to subject-verbagreement here, and completelyforgot about the abbreviation“EE.UU.” Here’s an even worseexample, under “substituted perform-ance,” which the book translates as“cumplimiento sustituto”: Cuandosin culpa de ninguna de las partes lasfacilidades para atraque, carga odescarga de mercancías fallan o unaclase pactada de porteador no puedeutilizarse o la forma de entrega acor-dada se hace imposible desde unpunto de vista comercial, pero sedispone de una sustitución razonable,dicha sustitución deberá ser ofrecidaformalmente y aceptada. Si la formao medios pactados de pago fallan porcausa de reglamentos domésticos oextranjeros...” Obviously, the authorhas fallen into the trap of translatingthe English word “facilities” as“facilidades” and “domestic” as“doméstico.” If he makes such basictranslation errors as these, can wereally rely on anything in his book?
In general, the author’s approach isapparently to copy (and often poorlytranslate) passages from other booksthat refer to the terms in his dictionary.On the Spanish-to-English side, wefind this under “habeas corpus”: “Inmany countries the habeas corpus pro-cedure has been broadened to provideprotection not only against bodilyrestraint and arbitrary imprisonment,but also against violation of the var-ious individual freedoms, such as wor-ship, occupation, inviolability of thehome, and so on. It has been used tooffer possessory protection againstgovernment agencies. Brazil is ➡
The ATA Chronicle | March 200350
one of the countries where the habeascorpus is the broadest. There are alsomore original and remarkably effectivelegal resorts. One of them, of Mexicanorigin, is the amparo, of whichMexican jurists are justly proud; theother is the Brazilian proceduremandato de segurança [sic].” I haveseveral quarrels with this explanation.In the first place, “offering possessoryprotection against government agen-cies” is not clear English, and in thesecond place, Brazil is a Portuguese-speaking country whose legal institu-tions are not of immediate concern totranslators of Spanish. On top of that,the Brazilian term is misspelled (it’smandado de segurança, with a “d,” inPortuguese). Furthermore, this passagedoesn’t tell translators of legal Spanishwhat they need to know: “habeascorpus” goes by the name “exhibiciónpersonal” in the Central Americancountries; it is actually called “habeascorpus” in Peruvian law; the Latinterm is not used in the legal Spanish ofother Spanish-speaking countries.
The dictionary is replete withinformation you don’t need. Here’s asplendid example: “Codificación visi-gótica. Visi-gothic codification.”Under “habilitación para comparecer
en juicio,” you’ll find that “legitimatechildren not emancipated when notauthorized to appear in court by law,must be vested with power therefor bythe father or by the mother, if underparental control.” Not only is this asloppily worded definition (howabout “unemancipated legitimatechildren” instead of “legitimate chil-dren not emancipated”?), but it is alsoa fairly self-evident one.
And what of information that youreally do need to know? For example,if you’re a court interpreter and needto know the basic terminology ofcriminal procedure, will the Dahlhelp you? Here are some examples ofwhat you’ll find:
• arraignment. Auto de proce-samiento. But that’s not right. Anarraignment is not an order (auto).
• indictment. Indiciamiento. That’snot right either. To my knowledge,there is no Spanish-speaking juris-diction where “indictment” is“indiciamiento.”
• plea bargain. Alegación preacor-dada. That’s the term they use in Puerto Rico, but there is no
indication in the Dahl that this is aPuerto Rican term.
• probation. Libertad bajo fianza,libertad condicional. But the firstterm actually means “release onbail” (which is not probation), andthe second means “parole” (every-where but in Uruguay).
In short, this dictionary will be oflittle or no use to professional trans-lators and interpreters (although itcould have benefited from theirinput!). I would not buy it.
Dictionary Reviews Continued
Cambridge?), I took a chance thathe’d be a fan of Kieslowski’s philo-sophical style of filmmaking. When Iapproached to compliment him on hisspeech, I told him who was hidingout in the corner, and he immediatelybegged me to introduce him, assuringme his French was up to the task.
It was the worst of all environmentsto work in, with the din of music andloud conversation surrounding us, but
Grant appeared to be holding his ownduring the introductions. ThenKarmitz complimented him on hisexceedingly droll acceptance speech.As I looked into Grant’s eyes, theywere smiling, yet with a certain glazedquality possibly signaling courtesyrather than understanding. I took theplunge and asked him in English if hewas able to hear well enough (ever thediplomat) to know that Karmitz had
just complimented him handsomelyon his speech. Eyes wide in delightand surprise, Grant profusely thankedme for the revelation, and a good timewas had by all. Or at least Grant and Iwere amused. Surfeited with glitz, theproducer and director soon made theirescape with me in tow, both satisfiedthat Tinseltown had lived down totheir expectations.
Interpreting for the Entertainment Industry: Continued from p. 33
Thomas L. West III is the president of ATA.He received his law degree from theUniversity of Virginia School of Law in1990. After practicing law with a largeAtlanta law firm for five years, he foundedIntermark Language Services, an Atlanta-based company specializing in legal andfinancial translation. The author of the best-selling Spanish-English Dictionary of Lawand Business, he travels around the worldconducting seminars on legal translation.He is an ATA-accredited (French→English,Spanish→English, and German→English)translator, and has also studied Dutch,Swedish, and Russian. Contact: [email protected].
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 51
Address your queries and responses to The Translation Inquirer, 112 Ardmoor Avenue, Danville, Pennsylvania17821, or fax them to (570) 275-1477. E-mail address: [email protected]. Please make your submissions by the25th of each month to be included in the next issue. Generous assistance from Per Dohler, proofreader, isgratefully acknowledged.
The Translation Inquirer By John Decker
W ords that everyone in business,government, and even volun-teer organizations dread:
Cuts in funding or Eliminated fromthe budget. The very thought of it, ifyou, your job, or your benefits arecontained within that austeritymeasure is enough to make yourblood run cold. Well, take heart: youare right now in a place of total immu-nity from cuts in funding. This part ofATA, constituting the column entitledThe Translation Inquirer, laughs toscorn all austerity, all budget slashing.I cannot speak for those long-agoyears when the column went out tomembers as a mailing separate fromother ATA publications—a postalbudget of some size, at least, musthave been made available by ATA forthe column back then. If you’ve beenin the organization long enough toremember that time of separatemailing, then you are a veteranindeed. But as of 2003, this column isunbudgeted (ZERO burden on yourannual dues), and therefore lives inperpetual proud immunity from theheartache that accompanies budgetcuts. You would have to be behind thisparticular desk, pecking away at thisparticular keyboard on a winter after-noon, to fully sense how comfortingthat unbudgeted immunity is, as wecomplete 10 years, that’s 110 consec-utive columns, of queries and replies.
[Abbreviations used with this column:D–Dutch; E–English; F–French;G–German; I–Italian; Po–Portuguese;R–Russian; Sp–Spanish; Sw–Swedish]
New Queries(F-E 3-03/1) A Lantra-L correspon-
dent wonders what “normes dedéploiement” is in the following con-text: “La présente régit l’impression de
documents créés et diffusés dans lecadre des nos activités. L’établissementde normes de déploiement permet àchaque associé(e) de bénéficier de laproximité d’une imprimante multi-fonctionnelle, avec tous les avantagesassociés à ce type d’équipement.” Whocan help with this?
(F-E 3-03/2) In a service letter, aLantra member notes that changeshave been made (improvements) andthe service provider is boasting thatthey are “toujours en action.” Howcan she give this credibility inEnglish? The quoted section thatcaused the problem is, “Ce change-ment laisse entrevoir un avenir trèsprometteur pour XXX qui est tou-jours en action pour vous offrir desservices à la hauteur de vosattentes.” What to make of the wordsin bold?
(G-E 3-03/3) Okay, okay. TheTranslation Inquirer can say defini-tively that this is the first query ever inthis column having to do with com-puter games, and it has to be takenwith that understanding: possible sci-ence fiction concepts may beinvolved. A Lantra member found atext on various components enhancingcomputer games, including “einganzes Ensemble optisch-visuellerund narrativer Verfahren wie Moni-tordisplay, Pegelstände von Energieoder ‘Mana’ und ‘Kurvenoptiken.’”It is that last word that really causedthe problem. What are they?
(G-E 3-03/4) Back to medical. AProZ correspondent wonders about“Scapulagleiten,” and provides the fol-lowing sentence fragments (perhapsthe original may also have been merefragments) to assist: “Occipitalleisteohne Druckdolenz. PhysiologischesScapulagleiten. Druckschmerz über dermittleren Trapeziuskulisse beidseits.”
(I-E 3-03/5) Is there something inthe nature of the blurb Demonstratesto colleagues commitment to the cus-tomer at all times in the phrase“Dimostra ai collaboratori l’atten-zione al cliente nello svolgimento ditutta l’attività del negozio?” Is that atleast close? asks a ProZ user.
(R-E 3-03/6) Cappie did a double-take, he reports, when he saw“nt[ybxtcrbq akjn” in an historicalnarrative about the early 1930s. In editedform, with the extraneous stuff left out,the sentence reads, “By;tyths-gen-tqws…cnhjbkb lf;t gkfdexbtcjjhe;tybz> celf nt[ybxtcrjujakjnf.” What sort of fleet or pool of ves-sels is it? Possibly neither naval nor mer-chant marine, but some third category?
(Sp-E 3-03/7) Here is an unknownterm, “rasquetas pigmentarias,” thatcomes under a description of a pigment-dyed fabric. The whole sentence goeslike this: “tinturas con rasquetas pig-mentarias aplicadas en algodonesbásicos, rústicos y mezclas con linopara prendas duras y efectos de doblevisión de color inspiración work.”AProZ-er wanted to know.
(Sp-E 3-03/8) Renato Calderónwould like to know what was meant bythe phrase “Les heredamos a nuestroshijos,” as heard in an advertisement forFanny Mae on Telemundo. This televi-sion channel is notorious for its man-gled Spanish. We inherit to our chil-dren sounds very awkward in English,and if this is to become a back-transla-tion into English for the purposes ofthis column, then perhaps what wasmeant was “Los padres dejan herenciaa sus hijos” or “Los hijos heredan desus padres.”
(Sp-E 3-03/9) The whole sentencein this text related to car insurance hadto do with an instance in which falseinformation was provided. ➡
The ATA Chronicle | March 200352
Here’s how it goes: “El aseguaradorpodrá exigir el pago y el tomador seobliga expresamente a satisfacer: Unafranquicia de mil quinientos euros enlas Garantías de ResponsabilidadCivil, y de estar contratadas en las dedacos e incendio del vehículo asegura-do, compatible con la que en su casose haya establecido en las condicionesde laópyliza.” It is only fair to say thata German translation was wanted forthis. English will do for now.
Replies to Old Queries(D-E 11-02/1) (“natiebedrijven”):
First of all, says Wanda Boeke, it’sFlemish, not Dutch. “Natie” is storageor warehousing company; warehouse.So she would translate “natiebedri-jven” as storage companies. DavidMcKay suggests that translators, whenencountering problem words like this,should rely more than is customary oncomprehensive monolingual diction-aries and the Internet. Based on infor-mation he found, stevedore firms orfreight handling firms work best. Oneof the characteristics of the “naties”was that they were jointly owned, withprofit sharing among the owners, andfirm is more suggestive of that type ofcorporate structure. “Naties” (a wordwhich in almost every other contextmeans nation) are a phenomenonpeculiar to Antwerp, and, according tothe Van Dale monolingual general-purpose dictionary, which labels it inthis meaning as “gewestelijk” (region-al). The definition there: “veem, ven-nootschap tot het lossen en laden vanhandelsgoederen, ook het gebouwwaar het kantoor en de stallen vanzo’n veem zijn.” But further researchreveals there are subtle differencesbetween “veem” and “natie.”
(D-E 1-03/1) (“lagere inzetge-wicht”): As opposed to the total
weight of the carpet, says WouterWessel, the “poolgewicht” (pileweight), or “inzetgewicht,” reflectsthe weight of the pile, usually ingrams per square meter. More infor-mation on this subject can be found at www.tapijtinfo.be/nederlands/young/ymiddensoorten.html. It remains to beseen whether “het lagere inzetgewicht”(lower pile weight) is a selling point orsimply fairness in advertising.
(E-Pt 11-02/3) (ground teeth in adiesel engine): This term has beendiscussed in the Portuguese trans-lators’ mailing list, says Gabe Bokor,and the term proposed was “dentesretificados.”
(E-Sp 8-02/6) (hard to kill): MaraTepper suggests “duro para matar.”Though not perfect grammatically,she justifies the translation in that“duro” brings in the macho aspect ofassassins at work, in a slangy orstreet-talk manner. “Para” adds ambi-guity for the preposition, in that it is adifficult choice to deliberately take alife, or this individual is difficult toknock out, or the killer is intent ondoing the kill. Mara adds that this ren-dering is for use in the Mexican-American market.
(E-Sp 10-02/5) (set the table):Michael Piper and his wife, a nativeof Mexico City, both object to EugeneWirkus’ interpretation of “montar lamesa” as set the table. Since he saysthat the phrase is used by Spanish-speaking restaurant professionals,they suspect that the term “montar lamesa” actually means set up the table(e.g., folding tables that have to be setup for a banquet). They both knowfrom our experience that the properway to say set the table in Mexico is“poner la mesa.” They have neverheard anyone in Mexico say “montarla mesa” in this context.
(E-Sp 11-02/5) (skeletons to beunearthed): Thomas Wilhite presentsthis rendering of the entire phrase,which is found on page 65 of theNovember-December ATA Chronicle:“Además, todavía falta la verificaciónmas adelante este año (de) los repor-tajes anuales de 240 compañías y asíqueda la posibilidad que otros trapossucios serán sacados a la luz del día.”Thus, unearthing skeletons could becomparable to bringing light on dirtylaundry, as they say in CostaRica. The phrase is used referring topolitical candidates.
(F-E 11-02/6) (“La société pro-duit, distribue et exploite les films”):Charles Ferguson says that if “dis-tribue” means to put them in users’hands, then “exploite” might empha-size collect [rent?] for them.
(G-E 7-02/5) (“verauslagte umlage-fähige Betriebskosten”): The Trans-lation Inquirer can’t imagine how hecould have been so negligent as toallow half a year to go by and not pres-ent Ernst Waldeck’s solution to this.Apologies to Ernst. Here is how he ren-ders the problem sentence originallyquoted on page 58 of the July 2002ATA Chronicle: The “receivables forproperty management services ren-dered,” which are reported under thisheading, comprise disbursed operatingexpenses which can be allocated, in theamount of 7.2 million euros. Advancepayments by the renters toward operat-ing expenses in the amount of 41.7 mil-lion euros are recorded under positionV.3 “liabilities from property manage-ment services rendered.”
(G-E 11-02/7) (“Leitendzeit”): It’sthe “on-time” of a transistor, saysGabe Bokor, i.e., the time duringwhich it is conductive. G-E 11-02/7:
Continued on p.53
The Translation Inquirer Continued
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 53
T he poems of Christian Morgen-stern (1871-1914), previouslymentioned on more than one
occasion in this column, are thedespair of translators. Hystericallyfunny, the humor of the poems is oftendirectly linked to the grammaticalpeculiarities of German.
Consider “Der Werwolf,” a satireon pedantry whose meaning dependson the fact that wer means “who” inGerman, that wer has four singulardeclined forms (wer [nominative];wes [archaic genitive: the modernform is wessen]; wem [dative]; andwen [accusative]) and no plural forms.
A direct translation of the poeminto English is impossible because,in English, wer is unrelated to “who.”At least three published translators,W. D. Snodgrass and Lore Segal(University of Michigan Press,1967), Jess (Black Sparrow Press,1970), and Walter Arndt (YaleUniversity Press, 1993), attempt tobypass the problem by leavingGerman phrases from the originalpoem in their English translations.For example, phrases such as derWerwolf, des Weswolfs, dem Wemwolf
and den Wenwolf. A fourth translator,Karl F. Ross (University of CaliforniaPress, 1964), transforms the werwolfto a banshee, and then declines ban-shee as “banher” and “banhers.”
Yet there is a way, discovered byAlex Gross, to let the werwolf remaina werwolf and translate the poem intoEnglish. Alex Gross noticed that analternate spelling in English is
“werewolf,” that “were,” as a conju-gation of “to be” has many forms, andthat English verb conjugations couldbe substituted for German pronoundeclensions.
Based on Alex Gross’s insight,here is a translation by Ronnie Apterand me, published in 1998 in Satire,then a print journal and now online:
Herman is a librettist and translator. Submit items for future columns via e-mail to [email protected] or viasnail mail to Mark Herman, 5748 W Brooks Rd., Shepherd, MI 48883-9202. Discussions of the translation of humorand examples thereof are preferred, but humorous anecdotes about translators, translations, and mistranslationsare also welcome. Include copyright information and permission if relevant.
Humor and Translation By Mark Herman
Who’s on First, Were’s on Second
The Werewolf
One night a werewolf crept from bed,abandoned wife and child and fledin desperation to the stonethat marked a dead schoolmaster’s bones.
“Great sage,” he howled in his frustration,“let me receive your conjugation!”He crossed his paws. The corpse awokewithin its grave, rose up, and spoke:
“Were ‘were’ the plural past in tense,a ‘werewolf’ were, in consequence,a ‘wolf you were.’ To be succinct,you were then, as it were, extinct.
“But given ‘wolf’ is singularand ‘were’ subjunctive to concur,just one sense must one thence infer:you are not now nor ever were.”
The werewolf howled, “Most wise of men,can I be brought to life again?”The scholar shrugged, “It cannot be.The ‘iswolf’ is a fantasy.”
The werewolf bowed to eruditionand thanked the dead academician;then, blind with tears, sought kith and kinto tell them all they might have been.
Alexander Aron says that“Leitendzeit” translates into conduct-ing state duration. A commonly usedengineering term is on-time, describ-ing the state where a solid-statedevice (here, power MOSFET) oper-ated as a switch is open, or On.
(Sp-D 2-03/9) (“recurso de supli-cación”): Alan Berson states that inmany Spanish-speaking countries, it
is more commonly written as “recur-so de súplica.” It is nothing morethan a petition for reconsideration,i.e., an appeal to a higher authoritywhen an adverse decision has beengiven, whether in patents, a legaldecision, etc.
A hearty thank you to all contributors.
The Translation Inquirer Continued from p. 52ATA Members
Check out Life and Disability Insurance through Mutual of Omaha
800.223.6927 402.342.7600
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The ATA Chronicle | March 200354
ATA Accreditation Exam Information
Upcoming Exams
CaliforniaApril 26, 2003San FranciscoRegistration Deadline:April 11, 2003
July 12, 2003GardenaRegistration Deadline:June 27, 2003
MassachusettsMay 4, 2003SomervilleRegistration Deadline:April 18, 2003
MichiganMay 10, 2003KalamazooRegistration Deadline:April 25, 2003
August 30, 2003NoviRegistration Deadline:August 15, 2003
MissouriMay 4, 2003Kansas CityRegistration Deadline:April 18, 2003
New JerseyMay 4, 2003Jersey CityRegistration Deadline:April 18, 2003
North CarolinaJune 8, 2003CharlotteRegistration Deadline:May 23, 2003
OhioJune 21, 2003KentRegistration Deadline:June 6, 2003
PennsylvaniaMay 10, 2003PittsburghRegistration Deadline:April 25, 2003
TennesseeSeptember 14, 2003NashvilleRegistration Deadline:August 29, 2003
TexasApril 26, 2003San AntonioRegistration Deadline:April 11, 2003
May 10, 2003El PasoRegistration Deadline:April 25, 2003
August 16, 2003HoustonRegistration Deadline:August 1, 2003
WashingtonApril 26, 2003SeattleRegistration Deadline:April 11, 2003
WisconsinMilwaukeeJune 7, 2003Registration Deadline:May 23, 2003
ArgentinaJune 7, 2003Buenos AiresRegistration Deadline:May 23, 2003
GermanyMay 24, 2003RegensburgRegistration Deadline:May 9, 2003
MexicoJune 7, 2003GuedalajaraRegistration Deadline:May 23, 2003
Congratulations
Danish into EnglishDavid C. RumseyElk Mound, WI
Spanish into English
Jan L. CallowayBrooklyn, NY
Steven HanleyNew York, NY
Richard S. Quiggins IIBoyds, MD
English into DutchIngrid Van PraagHouston, TX
English into FinnishTopi K. JunkkariHelsinki, Finland
English into FrenchEve A. DupertuisSalt Lake City, UT
Rivka G.S. PeyraVoorburg, The Netherlands
English into JapaneseMasako McMillanLongmont, CO
Mika NagaiNovi, MI
English into PortugueseM. Cristina KnutzonAlpharetta, GA
English into SpanishDennis BrehmeGreenville, SC
Maria J. ElizaldeGrapevine, TX
Lidia T. WassertheilBuenos Aires, Argentina
Please direct all inquiries regarding general accreditation information to ATA Headquarters at (703) 683-6100. Registration for all accreditation exams should bemade through ATA Headquarters. All sittings have a maximum capacity and admission is based on the order in which registrations are received. Forms are avail-able from the ATA website or from Headquarters.
CIMCE# Credit Hours Session Title1152 12 I-1 “Home Alone 3”: Building a Cooperative Network of Support Among Interpreters
(Friday, 10:00-11:30 am)
1319 1.5 TP-2: From Consecutive and Simultaneous to Dialogue InterpretingTP-3: An Adventure in Online Learning: Introduction to Medical Interpreting
1320 1.5 I-3: Interpreting is Like Solving a Cr _ _ _ w _ _ d P _ _ _ le: Parallel Strategies and TechniquesI-16: Coming to Terms
1321 1.5 P-4: No Longer Camões’ Portuguese: Syntactic, Lexical, Grammatical, and Stylistic Traps to Trip Upthe Intrepid Translator of Brazilian, European, and African PortugueseP-5: Portuguese in Metamorphosis: The Shak-Ess-Pey-Are-Eih Effect
1322 3.0 S-5: Cultural Differences in Ethical Issues Regarding U.S. Models of Contracts, Codes of Conduct,and Similar in Latin AmericaS-14: How to Translate for the Healthcare Consumer
1323 1.5 I-11: The Third Interlocutor: The Visible Language Interpreter in a Healthcare Setting
1324 1.5 I-15: Teach Your Client (How to Work With an Interpreter)
1325 1.5 I-12: Nuts and Bolts on Different Types of Interpreting
1326 3.0 Seminar P: The Art of Medical Interpretation: An Inclusive Approach to Teaching
1327 6.0 Seminar A: Strategies for Sight Translation, Consecutive Interpretation, and Note Taking
1328 1.5 I-1: The Time Factor in Interpreter TrainingI-2: Consecutive Interpretation: The Mysterious Interplay Between Notation and Memory
1329 1.5 I-6: The Use of Portable Equipment in Conference Interpreting: When and When NotI-10: Telephone Interpreting: Everything You Wanted to Know
1330 1.5 LAW-1: The Concept of Equivalence in Court Interpreting
1331 1.5 MED-3: Programs, Politics, and Perseverance: What’s New in Healthcare Interpreting in the U.S.
1332 1.5 SL-3: U.S. Legal Terms: How to Say It in Russian and Ukrainian
1333 1.5 S-12: Topics in Spanish Lexical Dialectology: La ciudad y los fueros
1334 1.5 I-13: What Can Interpreters Learn from Aristotle and Stanislavsky?I-17: A Comparative Analysis of the Professionalization of Community Interpreting in Europe and the U.S.
1335 1.5 A-1: The Challenge of Decoding, Encoding, and Understanding the Message: A National Security ChallengeA-2: Part I—How Do I Learn to Translate Arabic?; Part II—The Current State of Arab Dictionaries:Great Riches Amidst Poverty; Part III—Software Translation of Arabic Text
1336 1.5 H-1: Hebrew Language Workshop
1337 1.5 G-8: Translating German Legalese: Contract Law and Related Aspects of the Law of Obligations
1338 1.5 G-3: Workshop: Translation of Personal Documents into German
1339 1.5 I-8: A Quality Assurance Model: Update on a Process for Identifying, Training, and Testing TelephoneInterpreters
1340 1.5 S-3: Elementos conceptuales y terminológicos de los textos jurídicos en españolS-4: Enseñanza de traducción jurídica
For more information, please contact Teresa Kelly at (703) 683-6100 or [email protected].
American Translators Association
ConferenceAnnualForty-Third
November 6 – 9, 2002Atlanta, Georgia
Sessions Approved by theJudicial Council of California Administrative Office of the CourtsContinuing Education Activity for Court Interpreter Minimum Continuing Education Credit (CIMCE)
The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 55
The ATA Chronicle | March 200356
ATA Awards: Call for Nominations
ATA Alexander Gode Medal The Alexander Gode Medal, the
American Translators Association’s mostprestigious award, is presented to an indi-vidual or institution for outstanding serviceto the translation and interpretation profes-sions. This award may be given annually.
Individuals or institutions nominated donot have to be members of ATA. However,a history of constructive relations with ATAand the language professions in general isdesirable. Nominees do not have to be U.S.citizens. Petitions and letter campaigns arenot encouraged.
Nominations should include a sufficientlydetailed description of the individual’s orinstitution’s record of service to the transla-tion and/or interpretation professions toenable the Honors & Awards Committee todraw up a meaningful short list for approvalby the ATA Board of Directors.
Nomination Deadline: May 1, 2003. Please send your nominations of the
individual or institution you consider wor-thy of receiving the next Gode Medal to theChair of the ATA Honors & AwardsCommittee at the address listed at the bot-tom of the page.
ATA Ungar GermanTranslation Award
ATA invites nominations for the 2003Ungar German Translation Award. This awardis bestowed biennially in odd-numberedyears for a distinguished literary translationfrom German into English published in theU.S. (The Lewis Galantière TranslationPrize for translations from any language,except German, is awarded in even-num-bered years.)
To be eligible for the award, to be pre-sented at the ATA Annual Conference inPhoenix, Arizona, November 5-8, 2003, thepublished translation must have beentranslated from German into English andpublished in the U.S. in 2001 or 2002.
The published translation must list thetranslator’s name on the title page and
preferably also on the dust jacket.Preference will be given to published worksthat provide information on the translator.The translator need not be an ATA member,however, the translator should have astrong connection with the U.S. (citizen-ship or permanent residence). The nomina-tion must be submitted by the publisher ofthe translated work.
The nomination must include a coverletter, with complete publication informa-tion for the work being nominated,together with a brief vita of the translator,at least two copies of the nominated work,plus one extra copy of the dust jacket, andtwo copies of at least 10 consecutive pagesfrom the original work as keyed to the pagenumbers of the translations (ESSENTIAL!).
Nomination Deadline: May 15, 2003.Publishers are encouraged to submit nom-inations early!
Award: $1,000, a certificate of recogni-tion, and up to $500 toward expenses forattending the ATA Annual Conference inPhoenix, Arizona, November 5-8, 2003.
Please contact the ATA Honors &Awards Committee at the address listed atthe bottom of the page.
ATA 2003 StudentTranslation Award
In 2003, ATA will award a grant-in-aid toa student for a literary or sci-tech transla-tion or translation-related project. Theaward, which will be presented at the ATAAnnual Conference in November 2003, isopen to any graduate or undergraduatestudent or group of students attending anaccredited college or university in the U.S.Preference will be given to students whohave been or are currently enrolled intranslator training programs. Students whoare already published translators are, how-ever, ineligible. No individual student maysubmit more than one entry.
The project, which may be derivedfrom any facet of translation studies,should result in a project with post-grant
applicability, such as a publication, confer-ence presentation, or teaching materials.Computerized materials are ineligible, as aredissertations and theses. Translations mustbe INTO ENGLISH from a foreign language;previously untranslated works are preferred.
Applicants must complete a form (avail-able from ATA Headquarters) and submit aproject description not to exceed 500words. If the project is a translation, thedescription must present the work in itscontext. It must also be a substantivestatement of the difficulties or innovationsinvolved in the project and of the post-competition form the work will take. Theapplication must be accompanied by astatement of support from the facultymember who is supervising the project.This letter of support should demonstratethe faculty supervisor’s intimate familiaritywith the student’s work, and include adetailed assessment of the project’s signif-icance and of the student’s growth anddevelopment in translation.
If the project involves an actual transla-tion, a translation sample of not less than400 and not more than 500 words, togetherwith the corresponding source-languagetext, must accompany the application. Thetranslation sample may consist of two ormore separate passages from the samework. For poetry, the number of wordsmust total at least 300.
Application Deadline: April 15, 2003Award: $500, a certificate of recogni-
tion, and up to $500 toward expenses forattending the ATA Annual Conference. Oneor more certificates may also be awardedto runners-up.
All nominations and materials should beaddressed to:Chair, ATA Honors & Awards CommitteeAmerican Translators Association225 Reinekers Lane, Ste 590Alexandria, VA 22314Phone: (703) 683-6100; Fax: (703) 683-6122; E-mail: [email protected]
AssociationsMake A BetterWorld
Check out ATA’s online JobBank in the Members Only section of the ATA website atwww.atanet.org/membersonly.
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The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 57
Register Today!
Hyatt Regency
Jersey City, New Jersey
May 2-4, 2003
Join your colleaguesin the New York City area, May 2-4, for in-depth sessions on legal translation.
FRIDAY: Legal translation sessions will be presented in English.
SATURDAY & SUNDAY: Specialists will present language-specific sessions.
Participants are asked to sign up for a specific language pair, but are free to attend sessions in other languages.
Languages offered will be based on early registration figures (early March cutoff).
All sessions will be submitted for Continuing Legal Education Credit by the State of New York and Continuing
Education Credit by the States of California and Washington (Sessions are pre-approved by the State of Oregon).
REGISTRATION FEESAfter March 7 and Onsite: ATA Members $305 Nonmembers $420
Space is limited. For more information, contact ATA Headquarters at (703) 683-6100 or visit the ATA website
at www.atanet.org and click on the Legal Translation Conference link on the home page. (Direct link is
www.atanet.org/legal.)
COMPLETE THE REGISTRATION FORM ON THE FOLLOWING PAGE!Hotel Information: Be sure to make your hotel reservations at the Hyatt Regency, 2 Exchange Place, Jersey
City, NJ 07302. A small block of rooms has been reserved at $149 single/$169 double a night, plus tax. To take
advantage of this special rate, reservations must be made by April 10. Contact the Hyatt at (201) 469-1234 for
reservations. Be sure to mention that you are attending ATA’s Legal Translation Conference.
The Hyatt is located 20 minutes from Newark International Airport on the Harborside Financial Center’s south
pier, overlooking the New York Harbor.
★ ATTENTION EXHIBITORS AND SPONSORS ★
If you would like to participate in the ATA Legal Translation Conference, please contact Walter Bacak at
▼ An ATA Professional Development Conference ▼
Legal Translation Conference
REGISTRATION FORM
Name: __________________________________________________________ ATA Member Number: ____________________________First Name Middle Initial Last Name
Employer/School: _________________________________________________________________________________________________(Only list employer or school if you want it to appear on your badge.)
Address: ________________________________________________________________________________________________________Street
________________________________________________________________________________________________________City State/Province Zip/Postal Code Country
Telephone–Primary: _________________________________________ Secondary: ___________________________________________
Fax Number: ______________________________________ Email Address: ________________________________________________
Please indicate the primary and secondary language pairs you are interested in. If there is insufficient registration or speaker availabil-ity in your primary pair, you will be offered a full refund. Please note that the first day features general sessions in English. The secondand third days will offer both general and language-specific sessions.
Primary Pair: Source Language: ________________________________ Target Language: ________________________________
Secondary Pair: Source Language: ________________________________ Target Language: ________________________________
CONFERENCE REGISTRATION FEES: ATA Member Nonmember*
After March 7 and Onsite $305 $420 $__________
*Individuals who join ATA when registering for this seminar qualify for the ATA member registration fee. Please contact ATA or visit the ATA website for a membership application.
TOTAL PAYMENT: $__________
Cancellations received in writing by April 25, 2003 are eligible for a refund. Refunds will not be honored after April 25. A $25 administrativefee will be applied to all refunds except for the cancellation of a given language pair.
❑ Check/Money Order: Please make payable, through a U.S. bank in U.S. funds, to American Translators Association.❑ Credit Card: Charge my ❑ American Express ❑ VISA ❑ MasterCard ❑ Discover
Card No. ____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/ Expiration Date: _____________
Name on Card: ____________________________________________ Signature: _____________________________________________
Please send payment and completed form to: American Translators Association, 225 Reinekers Lane, Suite 590, Alexandria, VA 22314.OR, if paying by credit card, please fax your completed form to: (703) 683-6122.
_____ Please check here if you require special accessibility or assistance. (Attach a sheet with your requirements.)
For more information about the ATA Legal Translation Conference or ATA membership, please visit the ATA website at www.atanet.org or contact ATA at (703) 683-6100 or [email protected].
LEGAL TRANSLATION CONFERENCEHyatt Regency ▼ Jersey City, New Jersey ▼ May 2-4, 2003
✁
The ATA Chronicle | March 200360
how your compensation compares to that of your peers?
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The ATA Chronicle | March 2003 61
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American Translators AssociationOfficersPresidentMr. Thomas L. West IIIIntermark Language Services Corp.2555 Cumberland Pkwy, Ste. 295Atlanta, GA 30339Tel: (770) 444-3055Fax: (770) [email protected]
President-electMr. Scott Brennan14211 Lotus Lane #5112Centreville, VA 20120Tel: (703) 815-1593Fax: (413) [email protected]
SecretaryMs. Courtney Searls-RidgeGerman Language Services2658 48th Avenue SWSeattle, WA 98116Tel: (206) 938-3600Fax: (206) [email protected]
TreasurerDr. Jiri Stejskal7312 Oak AvenueMelrose Park, PA 19027Tel: (215) 635-7090Fax: (215) [email protected]
Directors Committee Chairs Division AdministratorsMr. Kirk Anderson2455 Flamingo Drive, #401Miami Beach, FL 33140Tel: (305) 532-7252Fax: (305) [email protected]
Ms. Beatriz Bonnet7465 E Peakview AvenueEnglewood, CO 80111Tel: (303) 779-1288Fax: (303) [email protected]
Mr. Robert A. Croese204 Neely Crossing LaneSimpsonville, SC 29680Tel: (864) 967-3955Fax: (864) [email protected]
Ms. Marian S. Greenfield2619 Holly AvenueSouth Plainfield, NJ 07080Tel: (908) 561-7590Fax: (908) [email protected]
Prof. Alan K. Melby1223 Aspen AvenueProvo, UT 84604Tel: (801) 422-2144Fax: (801) [email protected]
Mr. Robert E. Sette109 Biddle AvenuePittsburgh, PA 15221Tel: (412) 731-8198Fax: (412) [email protected]
Ms. Ines Swaney6161 Harwood AvenueOakland, CA 94618Tel: (510) 658-7744Fax: (510) [email protected]
Ms. Laura E. Wolfson244 Riverside Drive, Apt 5ENew York, NY 10025Tel: (212) 665-5003Fax: (212) [email protected]
Mr. Timothy Yuan89-33 Pontiac StreetQueens Village, NY 11427Tel: (718) 776-8139Fax: (718) [email protected]
AccreditationLilian Novas Van VrankenSpring, TXTel: (281) [email protected]
Active Membership ReviewLeland D. WrightKent, OHTel: (330) 673-0043Fax: (330) [email protected]
ChaptersRobert A. CroeseSimpsonville, SC Tel: (864) 967-3955Fax: (864) [email protected]
Dictionary ReviewBoris M. SilversteynVenice, FLTel/Fax: (941) [email protected]
DivisionsDorothee RacetteSaranac, NYTel: (518) 293-7494Fax: (518) [email protected]
Education and Training(Non-ATA Programs)Gertrud Graubart ChampeSurry, METel: (207) [email protected]
EthicsVacant
FinanceJiri StejskalMelrose Park, PA Tel: (215) 635-7090Fax: (215) [email protected]
Honors and AwardsVacant
Interpretation PolicyAdvisoryChristian DegueldreSan Diego, CATel: (858) 569-6162Fax: (858) [email protected]
Mentoring Task ForceCourtney Searls-RidgeSeattle, WATel: (206) 938-3600Fax: (206) [email protected]
Professional Development(ATA Programs)Marian S. GreenfieldSouth Plainfield, NJTel: (908) 561-7590Fax: (908) [email protected]
Public RelationsChris DurbanParis, FranceTel: 33(1)42935802Fax: 33(1)[email protected]
Kevin S. HendzelArlington, VATel: (703) 516-9266Fax: (703) [email protected]
Special ProjectsAnn MacfarlaneSeattle, WATel: (206) 542-8422Fax: (206) [email protected]
TerminologySue Ellen WrightKent, OHTel: (330) 673-0043Fax: (330) [email protected]
Translation and ComputersAlan K. MelbyProvo, UTTel: (801) 422-2144Fax: (801) [email protected]
Chinese LanguageFrank MouPittsburgh, PATel: (412) 767-4788Fax: (412) [email protected]
French LanguageMichèle HansenHinsdale, ILTel: (630) 323-4720Fax: (630) [email protected]
German LanguageDorothee RacetteSaranac, NYTel: (518) 293-7494Fax: (518) [email protected]
InterpretersHelen D. ColeSilver Spring, MDTel: (301) 572-2855Fax: (301) [email protected]
Italian LanguageMarcello J. NapolitanoBeaverton, ORTel: (408) 422-7008Fax: (425) [email protected]
Japanese LanguageIzumi SuzukiNovi, MITel: (248) 344-0909Fax: (248) [email protected]
LiteraryClifford E. LandersNaples, FLTel: (941) [email protected]
Medical [being established]Martine DougéHollywood, [email protected]
NordicDavid RumseyElk Mound, WITel: (715) 962-3151Fax: (715) [email protected]
Portuguese LanguageTereza d’Ávila BragaDallas, TXTel: (972) 690-7730Fax: (972) [email protected]
Slavic LanguagesNora Seligman FavorovOrlando, FLTel: (407) 679-8151Fax: (646) [email protected]
Spanish LanguageRudolf HellerBrookfield, MATel: (508) 867-8494Fax: (508) [email protected]
Translation CompanyLinda GauthierMontreal, CanadaTel: (514) 376-7919Fax: (514) [email protected]
To International Federation ofTranslators (FIT)Peter W. KrawutschkeKalamazoo, MITel: (269) 387-3212Fax: (269) [email protected]: www.fit-ift.org
To Joint National Committee for Languages (JNCL)Christophe RéthoréHarrisonburg, VA
Tel: (540) 568-3512Fax: (540) [email protected]
To ASTM Translation UserStandards ProjectBeatriz A. BonnetEnglewood, COTel: (303) 779-1288Fax: (303) [email protected]
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44th Annual ConferenceAmerican Translators Association
November 5-8, 2003Pointe South Mountain Resort Phoenix, Arizona t
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