Group items tagged

"You sound bitter, Rose. Were you plagiarised?" This post is a follow-up to my earlier post, The Ethics of Proofreading. After searching for this post myself on Google, I was surprised to come up with a few hits that did not relate to my own work.

eMpTy Pages: An Exploration of Post-Editing MT - Part I

Very interesting post, as I'm on the PM side for Trad Online. However, I must say that I disagree with your point on the format : we've had to translate Word, Excel or Powerpoint files at best, but also many application files (.xml,.po,.strings, etc) or even directly online on the client's website. Take the exemple of application files : they open with a plain text editor, impossible to track changes, lots of code to be left untranslated, punctuation to watch carefully, etc. Client's website, even worse : no back-up, possible server crash and loss of data and various technical problems. It's impossible to expect the client to provide only clean Word documents... however, it would be reasonable to ask for more for these types of texts. What do you think ?

Hello and thanks for this blog, I check it from time to time and find it very interesting. I felt the need to react to this post, working myself for a translation agency as project manager. What you may (or may not) know is that project managers handle quite a lot of projects at a time. Let's say that for a single project there are a dozen languages, for another one 5 languages, etc. So, multiply the number of projects * number of languages required * 2 (for translator and proofreader) and you get the number of people who you're in touch with daily (not to mention clients or your colleagues). Working in a translation agency means juggling all the time with deadlines / people / files and keep everyone happy without losing money. It's very challenging and interesting, don't misunderstand me. But I sometimes envy translators, who can focus on a task more than 30 minutes ; a translation PM is constantly under fire and multitasking. Therefore I can understand that sometimes things don't go too well, i.e a file is forgotten and sent late to the proofreader. In that regard, it's also hard to expect a PM to send your translated file to the proofreader the next minute, when your email is just one of 150 daily emails received… You may say then that we could be better organised, but just like all freelancers in the translation business, we never know when and how many projects we'll get : sometimes there's plenty of time, sometimes we're at full speed. >> Direct clients usually ask me how much time I will need to finish a translation project, whereas agencies usually stipulate the time frame for project completion. Of course, when we do a quote, we agree on a set deadline with the client, based on our experience from other translation projects. Just imagine for a website into 10 languages if we had to define different deadlines for each language, after contacting 10 translators, half of which would already be busy on another project, so then 5 more translat

Interestingly, a study carried out by a French trade union for translators this year states that almost 40% of the 1000 translators who responded don't have any kind of degree in translation/interpretation, and that having followed a course in translation/interpretation does not guarantee higher prices. Even more : on average, translators who don't have such a degree have a turnover that is 16% superior to the others. Here's the original post I wrote with a link to the study http://tinyurl.com/35mutk5 - it makes you wonder whether this kind of theoretical knowledge on translation in even a plus…

This was posted over a year ago on my translation blog, but it may still be useful. Searching my Google Books library is a trick I've been using **every single day** in my translation work. Enjoy!

I posted some months ago about a podcast project in development. I now have a blog on WordPress. If there are any issues that you would like discussed, please let me know.

A post on how to identify and deal with scammers. You won't avoid all of them but it will help you.

I'd have liked to go but somehow disliked the hype around that event (Bob Sinclar ??) and the amount you had to pay to get in (actually considering this, Bob Sinclar was not so over the top). I published a blog post on the poor level of English of the speakers http://bit.ly/hsmyPM - would you agree ? ;)PS : for good coffee >> Italy ;)

@Dave : Thank you for this list, I already know some of them and will check the others ! Maybe we should try and consider writing posts in English to feature in that list ;) but for French-speaking readers you might like to read http://www.tradonline.fr/blog. @Jill : why is it that companies should not have freelancers' interests at heart ? As a translation agency our business mostly relies on freelancers and we feel that we offer a service (looking for customers) that is valuable to them. Or maybe you make a difference between a small business and larger LSPs ?Thank you both for the lists anyway ! Loved it :)Aurélie

reat post ! As a native French speaker it's great to have an outsider's point of view :) One thing I've noticed though, is that it's always kind of strange to hear a foreigner swear in French - it usually doesn't sound "right". Whether because it's not used appropriately or because it contrasts to the usually formal French spoken by foreigner, I don't know. Any idea ? ;)

Bonjour Eric et merci pour cet article ! Je rejoins certains points, notamment que sur la base d'un effet de mode tout le monde s'auto-proclame Community Manager, c'est fou en un an le nombre de gens « qualifiés » qui sont apparus. Pour ma part je commence tout juste à me trouver une légitimité à ce poste chez Trad Online et pourtant j'ai fait des études en sciences de l'information avec une spécialité en veille, formé des étudiants à la gestion de son identité numérique et passé des heures à triturer des flux RSS et poster sur les réseaux sociaux. Et malgré ça, je pense que sans connaissance du secteur dans lequel l'entreprise évolue, un CM sera inefficace voire nuisible à cette entreprise. Comment répondre à des gens qui passent par les réseaux sociaux pour le SAV ou posent des questions techniques complexes si l'on n'a qu'une connaissance vague des produits et services proposés, de la philosophie maison, de la typologie des clients ou fournisseurs ? Pour ma part je n'aurai pas pu faire ceci sans être en interne ET faire la même chose que mes collègues, à savoir gérer des projets de traduction. Cela permet une connaissance complète des ficelles du métier, ce qui permet d'autant mieux d'en parler (dans un blog ou ailleurs). Sinon, c'est juste de la comm' corporate sans intérêt pour les internautes. Je me permettrais juste d'ajouter (mais là c'est une déformation professionnelle je l'avoue) qu'à mon sens une maîtrise parfaite de l'orthographe et un soupçon de multilinguisme sont également des qualités indispensables, bien plus que d'être un pro de la vidéo ou du son (moins utilisés que l'écrit quand même). Du coup (subtile transition), je signale une vraie faute dans l'article : on dit « empathique » et pas « emphatique », le premier désignant l'empathie et le 2e l'emphase, ce qui n'est quand même pas pareil ;) A bientôt à Lille peut-être ! Aurélie

I quite don't agree with "as agencies want to make profit of each project you can expect the price with translation agencies is well below what you usually charge customers (sometimes even only half of your normal price)". The difference in the prices freelance can charge to agencies vs direct clients is not due to the fact that we (I'm talking about Trad Online here) "want to make profit" in the sense of "becoming super rich at the expense of translators" - but you need to consider 1. the considerable amount of time spent looking for new customers (and keeping them) and 2. the time spent managing problems on some projects (last example I have in mind : a client wanting to provide a secure access to their website, which led to long discussion as to what technical means would be used). This has a cost. AND, if I may add another comment : of course that making (some) profit is the idea (along with providing a service) - if not, why bother working ? ;) Thanks anyway for this post, it was a very good read !

En tant que représentante de l'agence de traduction Trad Online à Lyon, j'aimerais partager avec les lecteurs d'Intermédia un petit retour d'expérience concernant la traduction de sites web. Nous avons géré plusieurs projets importants de ce type en 2011, et avant de demander un devis et vous représenter combien coûtera la traduction d'un site en anglais, ou en 5 langues, voici quelques questions à se poser, notamment sur ce que l'on souhaite traduire ! On peut diviser les types de contenus en 5 catégories... 

Translation is and forever will be my first love. This is what I trained for, studied for and practiced for many years. Therefore, the use and acceptance of machine translation is something I have had to think through and to see [...]

¿Les atrae la traducción automática pero aún tienen muchas dudas? ¿Les gustaría participar en un curso práctico sobre la posedición de textos traducidos automáticamente?