International Translator's Day

Yesterday, on September 30th, we celebrated International Translator's Day. I am glad there's a holiday like that because it tells me that what I and my colleagues do IS important and valuable.

A little about the history of the holiday:

Actually it's the day of Saint Jerome's death. That's how this awesome man of God looked like:

He was the one who translated the Holy bible into Latin and the one who is considered to be the patron saint of all translators and interpreters. He is also one of the Church Fathers. He wrote a great number of texts on theology, commentaries to the Holy Scripture, and he was an excellent translator who was not just concerned about the practical side of this job, but reflected on the theory of translation. He discussed the issue of the "right" or "adequate" translation, reflected on the usage of literal translations and comparative translations. Saint Jerome traveled a lot and finally decided to stay in Bethlehem where he worked on the translation of the Old and New Testaments into Latin. He was a father of all translators and interpreters who were later called by Alexander Pushkin "postal horses of progress" as their influence upon the world is so great and yet so subtle. Only in 1991 the world started to celebrate this holiday and I am so thankful that it did!

Yesterday I had my first experience of participating in ProZ.com virtual conference for translators and interpreters. It was amazing - around 10,000 people from all over the world took part in this event! There were a lot of discussions going on, educational sessions, powwows, fabulous discounts on various kinds of translation software and lots of other different things. I enjoyed getting to know my colleagues, discussing different issues with them. Unfortunately there were some problems with sound at the time of some panel discussions and sessions, but all of them are now recorded and available for the participants. So I hope the sound will be better and I'll be able to hear what I couldn't hear yesterday. I'm also planning to listen to some presentations which I wasn't able to attend yesterday because of the difference in time. So I can really call my translator's day intensive and highly productive.

I wish Happy Translator's Day to all my colleagues! May the Lord bless you and keep you and help you grow in your skills. As for me, there's one very important lesson that I learned from the life of our father Saint Jerome: I need to become a true servant, because that's what translators do - they serve other people and help them reach perfect mutual understanding.

P.S. This post was made with the help of the following resources:

Wikipedia

Musings from an overworked translator and

Tonnel.ru

10 interesting facts about the Russian language

In my previous post I promised to follow with the interesting info about some other languages. So here are 10 facts about the Russian language which might be of interest to those who are studying it. If you would like to have this list in Russian, please contact me and I will send it to you by email. So, what do I find interesting about my native language? 1. Russian has about 500,000 words, but only 2,000-2,500 of them are used frequently. 100 most frequently used words make 20% of all written and oral speech. A high school graduate's vocabulary usually has 1,500 to 4,000 words. Those who have graduated from a higher educational institution normally have a richer vocabulary consisting of approximately 8,000 words. 2. It's compulsory for all astronauts in the international space station to learn Russian, so we can call it an international language of space :)

15 interesting facts about the English language

I prepared this list for one of my English classes. And then it dawned on me that I can share it with you, too! So here are 15 facts about the English language that I find very interesting. Hope you do, too ;) Rudyard Kipling was fired as a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner. His dismissal letter said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language. This isn't a kindergarten for amateur writers." No language has more synonyms than English.

Clients vs translators: how do we show that we're honest?

This is a personal post, and I'd really like to hear the opinion of my colleagues about such situations and how to deal with them. My situation is kind of like the one described in Mox's blog . In December a new prospective client wrote to me asking about my availabiility for a new project. When I read the overall description of the project, I got really interested in it. But the client needed to know exactly how much time it would take and how much it would cost. No problem, just send me the text to look through or a part of it so I could get the gist of the style, level of complexity etc. In the reply that person just stated the wordcount, but there was no sample. I thought, maybe they didn't understand me. English is not my native language after all. In my reply, I stated the estimated time and cost based on the client's wordcount, but I repeated the request to see a part of the text. And then the person thanked me and ... disappeared.

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