Upcoming Translation Events in March

March will definitely be an interesting and busy month for translators. Below you will find plenty of conferences, webinars, workshops and events taking place all over the world!

1

NEUROLOGY WORKSHOP FOR MEDICAL INTERPRETERS: CONCEPTS, COMMON CONDITIONS AND TREATMENTS. Upper Midwest Translators & Interpreters Assn (UMTIA). Saint Paul, MN. USA.

2

Including Localization in Your Change Management Process, The Localization Institute, webinar.

3-20

Free Webinars from ProZ.

4

Northern California Translators Association (NCTA) Chapter Webinar. Translation Techniques for Crafting Natural English from Japanese.

5

Translation Technology Showcase, TAUS, webinar.

So Your Company Needs to Localize – Now What?!, The Localization Institute, webinar.

6

NUTS & BOLTS: HOW TO WRITE AN EFFECTIVE CV (2151). Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

7

INSERCIÓN LABORAL: CONSEJOS Y ERRORES MÁS COMUNES. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

7-27

SDL Trados Training & Certification – Proz. Webinars

8-9

International Shakespeare: Translation, Adaptation, and Performance, UMass Translation Center, Amherst, Massachusetts USA

10

American Translators Association. ATA 55th Annual Conference. Chicago, IL. USA.

MARRIAGE: TILL DEATH DO US PART? MÓDULO 1. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

TALLER INTENSIVO DE CORRECCIÓN EN ESPAÑOL. NIVEL AVANZADO. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

11

Introduction to CAT tools and translation memories, Alexandria Project, the Translation Knowledge Hub, webinar.

TALLER INTENSIVO DE TRADUCCIÓN PARA SUBTITULADO DE MEDIOS AUDIOVISUALES. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

12

FORMACIÓN DEL TRADUCTOR CORRECTOR EN LENGUA ESPAÑOLA. MÓDULO I. OPCIÓN MATUTINA. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

FORMACIÓN DEL TRADUCTOR CORRECTOR EN LENGUA ESPAÑOLA. MÓDULO I. OPCIÓN VESPERTINA. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

13

TALLER: CARACTERÍSTICAS DEL LENGUAJE JURÍDICO APLICADO A LA TRADUCCIÓN. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

14

Translation Risk Management, The Localization Institute, webinar.

Working with CAT tools and translation memories, Alexandria Project, the Translation Knowledge Hub, webinar

14-15

Yale Conference on Baltic and Scandinavian Studies, The Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, The Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study, New Haven, Connecticut USA.

17

SDL TRADOS 2007 NIVEL INICIAL. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

DIVORCE: SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO? Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina.

18

Game Localization Summit at GDC, IGDA Game Localization SIG, San Francisco, California USA.

19

Integrating Localization and Content Development Processes, The Localization Institute, webinar

20

American Translators Association. ATA Continuing Education Webinar. Time Management for Freelancers: How to Get Things Done!

23-26

InterpretAmerica and the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA). “think! Interpreting” Conference.
Istanbul, Turkey.

GALA 2014, Globalization and Localization Association (GALA), Istanbul, Turkey.

24

Training: Build your own Machine Translation system, CrossLang Training Centre, Ghent, Belgium

24-28

Société Française des Traducteurs (SFT). Medical English Seminar. Lyon, France.

25

TALLER DE SOCIEDADES (DIRECTA E INVERSA). Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina

26

CONCURSOS Y QUIEBRAS EN BRASIL, DIFERENCIAS Y SEMEJANZAS CON EL RÉGIMEN JURÍDICO ARGENTINO. Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Argentina

27

The Covergence Era: Translation As A Utility, The Content Wrangler, TAUS, webinar.

28-29

Mid-America Chapter of ATA (MICATA). MICATA Symposium Keeping Current—The Next Steps In Your Translating & Interpreting Career. Overland Park, KS. USA.

The Translation and Localization Conference, Localize.pl, TexteM, KOMTE, Warsaw, Poland.

28-30

2014 MICATA Symposium, Mid-America Chapter of the American Translators Association, Overland Park, Kansas. USA.

The auditory brain was designed to hear music, not speech

Charles Limb, an otolaryngological surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, has reason to believe that the human auditory system was meant for greater things than understanding language and speech. For Limb, language is nothing but “a happy byproduct” of our true aural capacity.

Were we meant for more than just speech?

Language, for many scientists, is what makes us human. It’s what separates us from the animal kingdom and what allows us to master heightened forms of communication and interaction.

Despite the centuries of research which support this theory, Limb believes that the human ability to process more complicated acoustic systems, such as those that we find in music, might mean that the human brain was actually designed to listen to music – an aural activity which he considers to be far more refined than that of processing speech/language.

The human capacity to learn a musical instrument, respond to music and use music as a means of communication, are all reflective of the incredibly refined cerebral system that we have at our disposal. Communicating via speech and language is not nearly half as difficult for our complex brains to achieve when compared with the nuances of musical communication.

What do improvised jazz and language have in common?

In improvised jazz, the musicians communicate just like a group of people do when taking part in a conversation. You can hear statements, responses, questions, chatter which overlaps other chatter and general moods which are then disrupted by unexpected tangents, which take everything off into a new direction.

Jazz improvisations, “take root in the brain as a language,” Limb says, just like conversations we have through ordinary speech. The difference perhaps is that it takes a lot longer for the musician to get to the point where he or she is comfortable enough with the language of jazz to be able to improvise and “converse” through music with the same ease and confidence that he or she would do through ordinary speech.

What’s clear from Limb’s studies is that the language of jazz, just like speech, is based on a series of syntactic rules that all musicians subconsciously abide by. The music of jazz might be “heard” and “understood” without the need for semantic sense, but the syntax of language in jazz is most definitely in place. This is why Limb believes that humans utilize the same areas of the brain when listening to and playing music as they do when using speech to communicate with each other.

Indeed, with improvised jazz (with any music) the idea is to find beauty in the sounds shared. Jazz improvisations demand that the musicians find beauty in the sounds they create, but the meaning of the sounds isn’t important. When we communicate through languages, the semantic quality of what we say is just as important as the syntax. In music, the only thing the ear searches for is beauty. Our aural sense when tuned into to music is much more refined, much more sensual and natural than it is when we use it to communicate through speech.

In a sense, listening to music is the fine arts experience of human aural activity. Language communication is nothing short of cheap, fast-food for the ear.

Beethoven – a final thought

Taking Limb’s investigations to the next level, a quick look at Beethoven is particularly worthwhile. If Beethoven continued to write music long after he went completely deaf, perhaps our capacity to feel and process music is in fact the true purpose of our auricular abilities.

Beethoven couldn’t hear what people said to him, he became deaf to language but never to music. His capacity to “hear” and create music continued to function.

Machine translation far from replacing human translators

Machine translation has been around for over 20 years now, with new software, programs and web applications being developed at an impressive rate. One of the main reasons for this relates to the importance of the Internet in our daily lives and its subsequent effect: globalization.

However, despite the continued efforts and creative ideas of the developers of machine translation, human translation still remains the predominant force within the translation industry. Human translation is, without a doubt, globally considered to offer the best service in terms of quality for one basic reason: accuracy.

human-translation-vs-machine-translation

Human translation will never be redundant

Machine translation might be quicker, might offer short fixes to immediate problems, it might be useful for translations of basic content needs (like the kind of information likely to be found in a Facebook or Twitter post, or the kind of information found in online forums), but machine translation will never beat human translation when it comes to accurate translations which take context, culture, local community knowledge and the nuances of language (such as metaphors, puns and humor) into account.

This is why, unlike a number of industries worldwide, the translation industry continues to grow year on year and professionals continue to train to become qualified translation experts. Fear of redundancy in the translation industry is very, very low.

What’s happening in the translation industry? What’s its growth like? What are the real figures we should be looking at?

The translation industry is not affected by recessions like most other private industries. The demand for translations is simply too high and this demand is a global one. The most “in-demand” job in the translation industry is for military translators and, according to research conducted by the Common Sense Advisory, the top 100 companies operating in the market generate anything from US$427 million to US$4 million on an annual basis.

Another report, undertaken by IbisWorld, reveals that translation services will most probably reach US$37 billion by 2018, with the United States being the largest market in the world, closely followed by Europe and then Asia. Both government sectors and private companies contribute to the demand for high quality translation across the globe. In fact, the United States Bureau of Statistics predicts the industry to grow by an incredible 42% by the time we get to 2020.

The Internet, globalization and rising industries

The incredible demand for translation expertise on a global scale is a positive sign for both machine and human translations sectors. As the Internet continues to provoke a surge in globalization, there will be more companies, organizations and individuals in need of both quick, concise translations, and detailed, quality translations; those which can only be completed by human translators who have a deep understanding of both the language, the culture and the context of the translation task that they have in front of them.

IBISWorld believes that the translation industry has gone way beyond the growth phrase and is now in the mature phase of its business cycle. By 2018, IBISWorld predicts the translation services will have increased at a rate of 4.7% per annum. The prediction for the global GDP growth for the same period is set to reach a mere 2.1% in comparison. Human translators are going to be needed to cope with such expansions. There’s little doubt that what they can offer in terms of accuracy and contextual knowledge will ever be beaten by a machine, search engine or software program, not matter how good it happens to be.

On a final note, for those translators working on translations for the medical and pharmaceutical industry, the prospects are even greater, particularly in the Asia-Pacific market. Translation services in this area of the industry and in this part of the world are expected to experience an increase of over 14% in the next four years.

Machines might be fast, but the translation industry is going to need plenty of human manpower to deal with the growing demands of globalization in the coming years too. There’s nothing which can beat that human touch.

What are the Top Language Industry Trends of 2014?

Advances in technology, in particular mobile technology, combined with the constant growth in social media communication, are the two driving forces behind the expected demand for professional language and translation services in 2014.

language-trendsImage courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

According to Renato Beninatto, the CMO of Moravia, we will see “major growth in the [language] industry this year.” Beninatto predicts that the expansion of mobile technology and social communications will generate a much higher “demand for localized language solutions.”

The National Council for Languages and International Studies has said that public and private-sector language-related initiatives are now a billion dollar enterprise in the US. In 2013, the industry generated $25 billion in the US alone.

The incredible growth recorded in the industry last year has been attributed to the large number of US companies working diligently to expand and strengthen their global presence. Mobile technology and social media communications have made international business opportunities so accessible that most companies worldwide, large and small, recognize the importance of investing in translation and other language services in order to open their doors to foreign markets.

Strangely enough, however, at the same time as investing $25 billion in language-related initiatives in 2013, the US continues to suffer from a lack of language-related subject interest in the classroom. The US Council on Foreign Relations believes that “foreign language education is on the decline,” and that it has been in serious decline for a number of years. This means that a lot of the language-related jobs needed for US brands to expand their businesses on a global level is outsourced to language experts in other countries.

In short, there are three main language-related trends that we should be ready for in 2014. 78% of CMOs believe that custom content is the future of marketing, reports Social Media Today. If companies want to continue globalizing their businesses throughout 2014, the most important tool that they will have at their disposal is that of content marketing programs. Companies which excel in 2014 will be those companies which invest both time and money in finding ways of connecting with different languages and cultures via mobile technology and social media communications.

Every day, more and more people are turning to mobile devices and smartphones as their primary source of information. Users access information from all over the world and they’re interested in what foreign companies have to offer/share. The demand for localized translations is likely to soar throughout 2014 and this will include translation services which dub multimedia content too.

On a final note, the impressive growth of cloud computing throughout 2013 improved the tracking precision of online user behavior. The detailed access to the demographics of a mass online audience that cloud computing has given us means that companies can now invest even more time and money in the generation of personalized online content for local communities and dialects. A surge in “local” translations is likely to further strengthen the economic position of the language industry as we progress throughout the next months.

The future seems to be very, very bright.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of crowdsourcing translation?

crowdsourcing

Some believe crowdsourcing to be a viable option for the translation industry and others are concerned that speed, quantity and low costs are no match for quality human translations.

Crowdsourcing is a relatively modern process, normally undertaken online, which enables a crowd of people to join together to complete a work-related project or raise a sum of money for a worthwhile cause. The term “crowdsourcing,” a combination of the words “crowd” and “outsourcing,” is best exemplified as a successful process by Wikipedia.

The Wikipedia encyclopedia wasn’t created via the more conventional process of hiring writers and editors to generate the content. Instead, Wikipedia appealed to the masses, a “crowd” of informed and enthusiastic online users, who were given full authority to create the information on their own. Wikipedia, as a result, is the most comprehensive encyclopedia we have ever seen.

The idea is that, by appealing to a large crowd of informed people equipped with the ideas and skills necessary to do the job, contributing enthusiasts will not only generate quality content but they will also make sure that the content generated is consistently updated.

Crowdsourcing in the translation industry

Wikipedia might be an undoubtable example of crowdsourcing success, but that doesn’t mean crowdsourcing is an appropriate avenue for all industries or all projects on every occasion. The translation industry is not necessarily the right environment for this kind of venture, or so many translation experts believe.

The advantages

Machine translation a few years ago made a play to dominate the translation industry by proving itself to be quicker and cheaper than human translation (HT). It became clear that what was missing from the machine translation was the quality, care and accuracy which was guaranteed from human translation. The result was the development of computer-aided translation (CAT), the post-human approach to modern translation which combines the efficiency of computing techniques with human quality.

Crowdsourcing in the translation industry hopes to go one better than CAT. Crowdsourcing translations are human translations which hopes to guarantee the accuracy of the work. Particularly when taking the case of Amara, crowd-sourced subtitle translation service for Youtube, into consideration.

Amara with its $1 million grant, has proved that via its crowdsourcing efforts it can translate videos into 20 different languages within 24 hours. The translations are generated by YouTube fanantics and “online nerds,” authorities in their individual fields with the time, interest, dedication and knowledge to make contributions as part of a global effort to translate YouTube information as quickly as possible.

The disadvantages

One of the main issues with crowdsourcing translations is, as with all new things, once something goes out of fashion or fails to continue to capture interest, productivity can slow down or die without much time to find an alternative.

It’s doubtful that interest in the crowdsourcing translations for Amara on YouTube will decrease. YouTube is just too popular. Here are some basic YouTube facts to blow your mind…

  • 60 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube per minute (to put that another way… one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube every second)
  • More than 4 billion videos are viewed on YouTube every day
  • More than 800 million unique users visit YouTube every month

Amara, therefore, is a translation project which already has the support of a huge number of online enthusiasts. Other translation projects might not be so popular and might risk standing the test of time. Crowdsourcing translations in some instances might simply run their course and it might be necessary to recruit paid translators to finish or continue the job anyway.

It’s also important to consider that while the Amara crowdsourcing community might be a crowd of video experts, translating into their native languages, they probably don’t have professional translation experience. Having subject matter knowledge and being a native speaker, doesn’t automatically make you an expert translator.

A number of industry experts believe that crowdsourcing translation projects still need to be monitored and edited or proofread by professional translators. In this sense the high quality, low costs and rapid results promised by crowdsourcing translation ventures, is nothing but a fleeting, well-disguised illusion.

A translation blip means obligatory chocolate for Japanese men on Valentine’s Day

Since the 1950s, Japanese women have showered the men in their lives with chocolatey gifts on Valentine’s Day, and all because of a tiny translation error made by a Japanese chocolate executive with a zest for Western traditions amidst post-war economic difficulties in Japan.

japanese-valentines

The Japanese Valentine’s Day Tradition explained…

When a Japanese woman wants to express sincere love for a man in her life, she’ll buy a very special chocolate gift, perhaps one in the shape of a car or a golf ball. She might even buy him a box of rich, creamy chocolates, filled with his favourite liquor.

The strange thing is that in modern-day Japan she must also buy chocolates for the men she couldn’t care less about. Cultural customs in Japan dictate that Japanese women are bound to buy chocolates for all the men that they know, even if they only choose to treat them to a standard, nothing-to-shout-about, chocolate bar on Valentine’s Day – a clear indication, in itself, of a certain lack of regard.

The giving of “giri-choco” or “obligation chocolate” plays a huge role in Japan’s Valentine’s Day traditions in the 21st century. Chocolate buying and giving is one of the most direct ways in which Japanese women can express their true feelings towards the men in their lives.

Chocolate traditions and blips in translations

Millie Creighton, a UBC professor of Anthropology, devotes part of her time to studying how the Japanese observe holidays. Her research reveals the ways in which the Japanese have incorporated the traditions and customs of Western holidays into their Eastern lives. Part of that research dates back to the 1950s when Valentine’s Day was first introduced to Japan.

Creighton’s discovery shows that an executive from a Japanese chocolate company took the idea of Valentine’s Day from Europe and convinced a number of Japanese department stores to promote the holiday as a way of improving the post-war effects on the Japanese economy. The Japanese executive in question misunderstood the traditions of Valentine’s Day in Europe and, thanks to the blip in his translation, Japan believed that chocolate-giving on Valentine’s Day was a one way affair – women sending chocolate gifts to men.

During the 1950s, Japan was keen to learn about Western traditions and to copy Western cultures. It was a country starved from “luxurious” items available in the West and so when Valentine’s Day first appeared on Japanese soil, there seemed to be no-better product than the Western sweet treat of chocolate for Japanese women to offer to the men that they loved – particularly on a day which was all about celebrating the joys of romantic love.

Modern developments and chocolate obligations

In the early years, chocolate-giving was reserved for the “special man” in the life of the Japanese female. It was treated as an act of romantic love. Since then, the tradition has developed to include “giri-choco” or “obligation chocolate” – the cultural custom which can be observed in Japan today.

Whether the giving of chocolate to all men seems strange or not, the tradition is loyally followed in Japan every year. Japanese women buy their chocolate gifts based on their feelings towards the men they are buying for and, in return, Japanese men get a very honest idea about what the women in their lives really think of them.

Lunfardo favorites: what Argentine women just love to say!

Argentine Spanish, or “Castellano,” differs to the more “neutral” forms of Spanish, found in Bolivia or Perú for example, in that it incorporates a distinctive kind of verb conjugation in the second person singular. It’s also crammed to the brim with phrases taken from “Lunfardo;” a dialect developed by working class Porteños (natives to Buenos Aires) so that they could communicate with each other without the police, and those from richer neighbourhoods, being able to understand.

Many Lunfardo phrases are still used in Buenos Aires today in everyday situations. They continue to form part of the city’s culture, but what phrases are really popular and who tends to use them? A few Argentine women share their favorite Lunfardo expressions of all time…

“La mina que lo amuró”

Put forward by: Renée Martinez, 32, Salta

The verb “amurar” actually means “to tack,” but when placed in the context of this Lunfardo phrase the translation changes completely. “La mina que lo amuró,” means, “The girl who left him.” Did Eduardo Arolas dedicate some of his works to the girl who left him, perhaps? The idea that Arolas pays tribute to “la mina que lo amuró” is debated within a post on Malena Tango. An individual who is “amurado” is, in literal terms, completely isolated from society by prison walls. However, when using the Lunfardo term in a metaphorical sense, someone who is “amurado” is completely head-over-heels in love with another and therefore, “an isolated prisoner of his or her emotions.”

“¡Me pegué un jabón!”

Shared by: Yamila Rosales, 27, Buenos Aires

Even though this phrase when literally translated means, “I hit myself with a bar of soap” (we would need to add the preposition con to the phrase), the Lunfardo expression transmits one of fear and is used when you want to say, “It gave me a terrible fright!” The origins of the expression, and how soap somehow began to be associated with fear, is unclear.

“Si te gusta el durazno, bancate la pelusa.”

Sent to us by: Dafne Schilling, 26, Córdoba

The Lunfardo meaning behind the word “durazno” (which literally translated is “peach” in English) relates to the idea of toughening up or doing something which is difficult. The complete phrase is something relatively similar to “She wants to have her cake and eat it,” in English. It’s a Lunfardo expression used to describe someone who likes doing what they’re doing, but doesn’t really like having to deal with the consequences or the “tough” aspect which is the result of the good stuff that they’re enjoying.

“¡Le dio una biaba!”

Shared by: Marina Manopella, 36, Buenos Aires

“Biaba” is the Lunfardo expression for “golpiza,” which means “to hit someone really hard.” The term is probably of Italian descent and there’s little difference between the “biaba” of 100 years ago and the way in which many young thieves today enter a shop, shouting, hitting and threatening those around them, sometimes even firing a gun and killing someone, without even really knowing why it is they do what they do. “Biaba” is a particularly strong word, with heavy connotations.  “Darse la biaba” means “to dye your hair” and it is usually used for men who cover their grey hair. It also means “to take drugs“.

“Me río de Janeiro,”

Selected by: Kiki Chiesa, 34, Buenos Aires

“Me río de Janeiro!” is a Lunfardo expression which might be used to replace the more straightforward Spanish phrase, “me importa un bledo” or “me parece ridículo.” When translated, it’s best to think of the phrase, “Don’t make me laugh!” used in a sarcastic tone by someone who really finds what has been said to them very “un-funny.” The speaker shows little respect and gives very little credit to the person they speak to when they toss out the phrase, “Me río de Janeiro!” The cute factor about the expression is that it’s also a beautiful play on words with the major Brazilian city, Río de Janeiro.

“Ratero oportunista”

Contributed by: Daniela Almirón, 23, Buenos Aires

“Ratero” is a Lunfardo term for “thief,” but the phrase “Ratero oportunista” isn’t one which has to be used literally to refer to a thief. Literally translated to describe a “thieving opportunist,” the phrase is perfect to metaphorically describe someone who is out for all they can get, irrespective of whether or not they ever actually steal something.

”Cana”

Put forward by: Vicky Chiappe, 31, Buenos Aires

Cana,” which comes from the French word “canne,” is a term that was predominantly used in prisons to describe a policeman’s truncheon. However, there was a time when “cana” was used to mean “police” and then, further on down the line, to indicate or refer to any kind of authority figure.

“Laburo”

Sent to us by: Gabriela Villagra, 37, Buenos Aires

“Laburo” is a Lunfardo word used, in its most basic form, to replace the term “trabajo” meaning “job” or “work.” However, the verb “laburar” can also mean to work hard enough to convince someone of something. For example, “laburar una mina” is a Lunfardo expression which means to “use all possible arguments available to win-over or pick-up a girl.”

“Fe-ca”… café… “Ye-ca”… calle…

Shared by: Mauge Rebuffi, 33, Salta

One particular characteristic of the Lunfardo dialect is the inversion of Spanish words. For example “café” becomes “feca” and “calle” (pronounced “caye”) becomes “yeca.” This simple inversion was one of the easiest ways in which people from the lower classes could disguise their conversations when talking close by to those that they wanted to hide information from.

“Iza de queruza la merluza.”

Contributed by: Alberto, from Lanus in Buenos Aires (honorary male invited to take part…friend of Mauge Rebuffi above)

“Iza de queruza,” is a Lunfardo expression which translates to “Listen up…we’ll do it on the quiet” and “merluza” is a word associated with “drugs.” The phrase is the perfect example of the kind of subjects that the Lunfardo dialect was specially invented to hide.

“¡No seas chanta!”

Natalia Fraga, 32, La Pampa

“¡No seas chanta!” is a Lunfardo phrase you might use when calling someone a liar or when accusing them of scamming you in some way. It can be used playfully to taunt someone or used more aggressively, depending on the tone of voice which accompanies it.