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Translation & Language

Translation & Language

A room for translators and others who would like to share and discuss translation, linguistics, localization and related subjects. (Background image: http://www.vladstudio.com/wallpap...)
Dallas Cao
Fwd: All my posts will be vetted at proz.com and proz.com simply ignores my protests. (通过http://friendfeed.com/dallasc...)
Dallas Cao
Dallas Cao
Fwd: Google Translate for Translators (GT4T) now works in all text applications. http://dallascao.com/en... (通过http://friendfeed.com/dallasc...)
Maitani
Fwd: DYSLEXIA VARIES ACROSS LANGUAGES Speakers of Chinese have disorder different from that of English speakers http://www.sciencedaily.com/release... via @tamihania (via http://friendfeed.com/diction...)
Fascinating article! - Eyoki from FreshFeed
Blue Voyage
When translating gets outsourced to the company that keeps deadlines and charges reasonably: http://www.uebersetzung123.com
Shannon Jiménez
Twitter Blog: Coming Soon: Twitter in More Languages - http://blog.twitter.com/2009...
Twitter jumps on the crowdsourcing bandwagon. Idiots. - Shannon Jiménez from Bookmarklet
Shannon Jiménez
translatorscafe.com starts its crowdsourcing project too. - Dallas Cao
Dallas Cao
Fwd: Google Translate for Microsoft Word (GT4word) Beta! - http://dallascao.com/cn... (通过http://friendfeed.com/dallasc...)
Shannon Jiménez
How does interpretation work at the United Nations? - By Christopher Beam - Slate Magazine - http://www.slate.com/id...
How does interpretation work at the United Nations? - By Christopher Beam - Slate Magazine
"Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi delivered a rambling address to the United Nations in New York City on Wednesday morning, calling Barack Obama "our son" and railing against the U.N. Security Council. He spoke not in Arabic, Libya's official language, but a local Libyan dialect. Does the United Nations have an interpreter for every dialect in the world? No. Speakers at the United Nations are supposed to deliver their speeches in one of the organization's six official languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese. U.N. interpreters then translate the lecture into the other five languages. If the speaker doesn't use an official language—either as a political statement or because he doesn't know one—the speaker has to bring along his own interpreter. That interpreter then translates into one of the official languages—usually English or French—and the other interpreters translate from that interpretation." - Shannon Jiménez from Bookmarklet
A surprisingly relevant article for my work. Thanks Shannon! - τorƍue
No problem. What are you doing that involves the UN and/or interpreters? - Shannon Jiménez
More of the later. :) - τorƍue
Say, what kind of tools do you use for your work? Do you ever use Google's Translation Toolkit? - τorƍue
I use Trados, since it is more or less the industry standard. I haven't tried Google yet, but I keep meaning to check it out. - Shannon Jiménez
"No education is required" is misleading, in my opinion... anyway, a great article, thanks :) - Alliandre (la Ippe)
Google's beta translation toolkit is nicely built (http://translate.google.com/toolkit), but we have concern about TOS: "You may not modify, rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute or create derivative works based on this Content (either in whole or in part) unless you have been specifically told that you may do so by Google or by the owners of that Content, in a separate agreement." and... more... - τorƍue
Shannon Jiménez
Stolen Lego giraffe penis was actually a tail - Telegraph - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news...
Stolen Lego giraffe penis was actually a tail - Telegraph
"The respected international news agency Reuters published a story on Tuesday reporting that the penis of a large giraffe model at Berlin's Legoland Discovery Center had been stolen four times. The 12in appendage, which is made out of around 15,000 bricks, had been repeatedly targeted by souvenir hunters since the statue was installed in 2007, it said. But a few hours later the news wire corrected the story to clarify that the part that had proved so attractive to thieves was actually the giraffe's tail. The Lego giraffe, it turns out, does not have a penis." - Shannon Jiménez from Bookmarklet
Shannon Jiménez
Sign Fail « FAIL Blog: Pictures and Videos of Owned, Pwnd and Fail Moments - http://failblog.org/2009...
Sign Fail « FAIL Blog: Pictures and Videos of Owned, Pwnd and Fail Moments
Trusted Translations
Shannon Jiménez
Quick poll: what languages do you translate to/from and in what specialties?
I'll start. I translate Spanish > English and specialize in science (mostly biology). - Shannon Jiménez
I translate from English to Chinese. I specialize in website localization. :) - Jianjun Zhang from twhirl
I translate between these languages : Persian <> English and I specialize in Project management texts, philosophy and literature. :D I'm a graduate student of Translation Studies - Selma
I translate from Spanish to French (and French to Spanish) with finance/ecomomics especiality. - Jean-Charles
English > Hindi, mainly localization of websites and e-commerce applications. - Vinay | विनय
I translate Greek <> English, French>English, French>Greek, Italian >Greek and specialize in legal and social science texts. - Katerina
English > Italian normally, but I could also do Spanish > Italian - Only videogames - Andrea Santambrogio
I'm currently in a different line of work. But when I translated, it was English > Hebrew, and mostly SF - Didi Chanoch
Bump so we can learn about new members :) - Shannon Jiménez
Russian <->English <->German Great feed. Thank you for asking the question, very often one needs a person knowing "not English" language. Will add the link to favourites. - Maria Podolyak
English -> Japanese in IT & T and occasionally medical. - Ryoko Omachi
English to Chinese and mostly IT translation. Nice to meet you here Jianjun. - Dallas Cao
English/German into French - Thierry Destinobles
Hi, just found the room :) I translate en/es/fr>it (mainly en>it though), mostly medicine and pharmacology. - Alliandre (la Ippe)
I translate from English and Spanish to German - IT (hardware, software), automotive engineering, renewable energies and civil engineering. - Anne Wosnitza
Same for me as for Anne: I translate from English and Spanish to German as well, but my specialities are Travel and Tourism, Pets and Fishkeeping, IT (hard- and software, systems) and anything related to Internet and Virtual Worlds. Nice to meet you all :-) - Anke
English to French, mainly environment, bodybuilding, fitness, marketing - Celine Graciet
English to Turkish - Murat Bişkin
English to Turkish turkish to english -french to turkish turkish to french- english to french-french to english - Dilara TAN
Shannon Jiménez
"This suggests a different way of thinking about the influence of language on thought: words are very handy mnemonics. We may not be able to remember what seventeen spools looks like, but we can remember the word seventeen. In his landmark The Language of Thought, philosopher Jerry Fodor argued that many words work like acronyms. French students use the acronym bans to remember which adjectives go before nouns ("Beauty, Age, Number, Goodneess, and Size"). Similarly, sometimes its easier to remember a word (calculus, Estonia) than what the word stands for. We use the word, knowing that should it becomes necessary, we can search through our minds -- or an encyclopedia -- and pull up the relevant information (how to calculate an integral; Estonia's population, capital and location on a map). Numbers, it seems, work the same way." - Shannon Jiménez from Bookmarklet
Shannon Jiménez
BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: Second language changes the way bilinguals read in their native tongue - http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2009...
"Do bilinguals have an internal switch that stops their two languages from interfering with each other, or are both languages always "on"? The fact that bilinguals aren't forever spurting out words from the wrong language implies there's some kind of switch. Moreover, in 2007, brain surgeons reported evidence for a language switch when their cortical prodding with an electrode caused two bilingual patients to switch languages suddenly and involuntarily. On the other hand, there's good evidence that languages are integrated in the bilingual mind. For example, bilinguals are faster at naming an object when the word for that object is similar or the same in the two languages they speak (e.g. ship/schip in English and Dutch). Now Eva Van Assche and colleagues have provided further evidence for the idea of bilingual language integration by showing that a person's second language affects the way that they read in their native language." - Shannon Jiménez from Bookmarklet
Shannon Jiménez
On Language - How Fail Went From Verb to Interjection - NYTimes.com - http://www.nytimes.com/glogin...
On Language - How Fail Went From Verb to Interjection - NYTimes.com
"Time was, fail was simply a verb that denoted being unsuccessful or falling short of expectations. It made occasional forays into nounhood, in fixed expressions like without fail and no-fail. That all started to change in certain online subcultures about six years ago. In July 2003, a contributor to Urbandictionary.com noted that fail could be used as an interjection “when one disapproves of something,” giving the example: “You actually bought that? FAIL.” This punchy stand-alone fail most likely originated as a shortened form of “You fail” or, more fully, “You fail it,” the taunting “game over” message in the late-’90s Japanese video game Blazing Star, notorious for its fractured English." - Shannon Jiménez from Bookmarklet
Shannon Jiménez
If translation were rocket science | The GITS Blog - http://ginstrom.com/scribbl...
"What if the Japanese-to-English translation industry were the rocket-science industry? What if instead of clients with dubious English skills "incorrecting" your translations on the authority of high-school English textbooks and long-retired sempai, they used hoary old physics textbooks to correct your equations?" - Shannon Jiménez from Bookmarklet
Shannon Jiménez
This site is awesome! You enter a phrase in English and it uses Google translate to translate it into Japanese and back again over and over... until "equilibrium" is found. - Shannon Jiménez from Bookmarklet
So hilarious. I could type in phrases all day. - Bret Taylor
Challenge: Find phrases that generate endless recursion: Here's one "Dogs love Cats" http://translationparty.com/tp... - Ray Cromwell
Claudia
Do you participate in any language exchange sites like livemocha or italki?
Foreign Translations
Please Take Our Survey on Global Communication! You'll get a Free Guide To Going Global With Confidence! http://app.bronto.com/public...
Foreign Translations
Foreign Translations, Inc. is a translation company located in Greenville, SC. We are currently working on an international business survey coming your way soon! Any questions you would like to see on it?
Shannon Jiménez
LinkedIn members-- did you get the email for an opinion survey that asks if you would translate the site for free?
I gave them a piece of my mind in the "additional comments" section. I blame Facebook for starting this trend. - Shannon Jiménez
I can't believe facebook did that too, and proz.com! - Dallas Cao
The ATA responds in a press release: http://atanet.org/pressro... - Shannon Jiménez
Shannon Jiménez
"Usarufa is a language of Papua New Guinea with just 1200 speakers (ISO-639 code "usa"). There's no fluent speakers under the age of 25, so the language must be considered moribund....I played them a recording of the "last words" of the Jiwarli language of Western Australia. After some questioning looks I explained that this language is now dead, and we were listening to its last speaker before he died. As one they all looked down, shaking their heads in disbelief and saying sorry, sorry, sorry…. It was as if I told them a mutual friend had died. They urged me to put that recording on a cassette tape so they could take it back to their village. That way, everyone would surely understand what will happen to the Usarufa language unless there are serious attempts to revitalize it." - Shannon Jiménez from Bookmarklet
Shannon Jiménez
Micah Wittman - friendfeedTranslate – userscript and bookmarklet (new!) for integrated language translation - http://wittman.org/friendf...
Useful for reading comments and posts in other languages. - Shannon Jiménez from Bookmarklet
Shannon Jiménez
Edge: HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? By Lera Boroditsky - http://edge.org/3rd_cul... (via http://friendfeed.com/languag...)
Edge: HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? By Lera Boroditsky - http://edge.org/3rd_culture/boroditsky09/boroditsky09_index.html (via http://ff.im/4ecRM)
"For a long time, the idea that language might shape thought was considered at best untestable and more often simply wrong. Research in my labs at Stanford University and at MIT has helped reopen this question. We have collected data around the world: from China, Greece, Chile, Indonesia, Russia, and Aboriginal Australia. What we have learned is that people who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can profoundly affect how we see the world." - Shannon Jiménez
Shannon Jiménez
""When quality and price don't matter"" - Shannon Jiménez from Bookmarklet
Shannon Jiménez
LinkedIn Infuriates Professional Translators: 10 Big Questions | Matthew Bennett - http://www.matthewbennett.es/1084...
Good analysis of LinkedIn's idiotic move yesterday. - Shannon Jiménez from Bookmarklet
Claudia
www.russlandjournal.de - Deutscher Podcast zum Russisch lernen
Anke
For those of you out there who understand German: Interesting interview with an interpreter for the EU, definitely worth reading :-) http://www.sueddeutsche.de/jobkarr...
Ulaş Apak
Could be quite useful for some of us: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009...
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