Your professional translator

Sorry I've been silent for so long! I've been really rather swamped in work lately, so yesterday was my first day free of translation. I'm thankful for the break. These past few weeks have been very busy and extremely stressful for me. I needed a break and I am enjoying one now. A couple more days, and I'll feel as good as new =) Meanwhile, I decided to read some translation blogs (always happy to learn something new). A few days ago one of my favourite bloggers and translators finally reappeared after several months of silence. And she wrote about marketing for translators. Freelancers greatly depend on their marketing efforts, so they always have to think about new ways to make themselves known to their prospective clients as well as other professionals. Celine, the author of that blog, shares that her best marketing instruments are her website, personal networking and professional networking. As I was reading her blog post, I started thinking about my own...

Today is the National Unity Day in Russia. I've always thought that it's a very young holiday as I remember it being celebrated since 2005 only. But according to Wikipedia this holiday was widely celebrated in Russia until 1917. So, what's the reason for it? It's pretty important, because on this day in 1612 both Russian peasants and the nobility united in order to free their country from Polish and Lithuanian invaders. If that hadn't happened, the territory of our country would probably be divided between Poland and Lithuania now... As much as I respect people from both of those countries, I'd rather stay Russian =) Now the sad part comes: in 1917 this holiday was replaced with the Day of October Revolution (November 7). As a child I remember watching big demonstrations on TV on this day. I was proud of my country, of the Soviet Union... Little did I know that one day it will collapse like a paper house in the wind because the mere existance of that cou...

I've been hearing a lot about pluses and minuses of machine translation lately. I had some discussions with a person who strongly believes in machine translation and its quality. I also met some other people who honestly believe that professional translators think too highly of themselves and their skills while in reality it's a simple job that can easily be done with the help of some software. Then last week I came across an article about a recent scandal in the Web connected with machine translation. Guess which organization tried to use it to translate its website? You won't believe it. It was Russian Academy of Sciences . Nobody knows how it happened that this institution chose to use machine translation (or hired a "professional" who used it). The result of this "work" was instantly noticed by bloggers all over the web.Some pearls include: the Squirrel Institute (instead of Institute of Protein Research ), Botanic sad-institute of wounds (it sh...

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 Bet...

I always wanted to learn French. I think this desire appeared when I was still a teenager. Why? Because I like the way it sounds, because it's a romantic language, and besides I had a goal to learn to speak English, German and French. When I got married my husband and I led a home group where we had two young people whose mother tongue was French. It was funny how much I could understand because I already spoke English and German. Listening to them talking to each other made me crazy, I wanted to be able to understand everything and to speak it just as fluently as they did! So when my daughter was 8 months old my journey started. I decided to study French by myself using the Internet. And I found lots of really good resources there! So, here are some quite useful links that have helped me and hopefully will be useful to you if you decide to learn this increadibly beautiful language: FrancaisFacile.com - an absolutely fabulous website with tests and tons of excercises on v...

I often recommend blogs and websites that I think are useful for translators. This week I'm sharing a new blog post from Thoughts on translation blog. Corinne McKay talks about large and small projects there and tells about her preferances. It made me think about the same issue. When I just started my blog I shared in one of my first posts that I prefer longer projects. Well, since then my opinion has changed a bit. I still like longer assignments, but like Corinne McKay I've also noticed that it's harder to maintain consistency of terminology, and besides when a project is not exactly interesting I just have to make myself work on it every day and I feel so much relief when I'm done. At the same time I am learning to value short projects. For translators who have many regular clients it's the best choice I guess. I personally prefer projects starting with 2,000 words and up to about 7,000 words. Of course it's not a problem if a project is smaller or larger....

Finally the weather here starts settling down to normal for this time of year - it's rainy and chilly. It made me suddenly realize I've worked all summer long and haven't had a vacation. So I decided to take several days, possibly a week, off after I finish the project I'm working on right now. I'm not going anywhere, just going to relax and be with my daughter during her last week before she starts kindergarten again in September. Meanwhile, I have found something very interesting for me and hopefully for some others. It's one of the recent posts on Freelance Folder website called " Our Top 10 Resources For Getting New Clients ". They are basically giving an overview of the articles they've written on this subject. That's what I'm going to study while I take a break from work. Probably. If I choose to. Or I might just relax and stop thinking about my job for 1 week, and then continue my learning and working process. Good luck to ever...