Going native, eh?

You know you've been away from the UK for too long when a British colleague posts on Twitter that "the children broke up today" and you assume for a moment that he's talking about the end of a relationship rather than the school year…

What’s your favourite translation blog?

While this blog is a relative newcomer—and has been sadly neglected of late owing to a large project I've taken on for the otherwise quiet month of July—many of the more established translation blogs are currently competing (in a very civilized, translatorly manner, of course) for inclusion in the list of the Top 100 Language Blogs of 2009.

If you haven't already voted, you have until July 27 to do so. With so many great translation blogs out there, it can be hard to choose one overall favourite. I won't reveal how I voted, but here—in strictly alphabetical order—is a shortlist of six of my favourites from among the nominated blogs:

• Marketing Translation
  
• Masked Translator
  
• Musings from an Overworked Translator
  
• Mox's Blog
  
• Thoughts on Translation
  
• Translation Times
  

If you're new to the translation blogosphere, all of the above are well worth following. But be sure to check out some of the other interesting blogs on the list of Top 100 nominees, too.

Scam warning!

Alarm bells rang today when I received the following email, headed "Order inquiry From Switzerland":

Hello,
My Name is John Stone from Switzerland. Do you ship to Switzerland also if accept credit card as method of payment.

Thank you

For a start, the English is obviously that of a non-native speaker, yet he uses a very Anglo-Saxon sounding name. Since he purports to be from Switzerland, "Hans Stein" would have been more convincing! And why is he inquiring about shipping and method of payment without first explaining what he wants to pay me for?

Apple Mail flagged the message as junk. I checked the routing information in the email header and found it had come from a server in the Netherlands, while the domain of the address used (rediffmail.com) is located in India. So no sign of Switzerland there!

I therefore have to conclude that Mr John Stone is most likely a buddy, or at least a kindred spirit, of our old friends Messrs John Mathew and Daniel Creig. If anyone else has received his email, my advice would be to ignore and delete it.

Update, July 16: It appears "John Stone" is trying to defraud online businesses generally, and not just translators. See this discussion: http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?p=778739

Would you buy a second-hand translation from these folks?

Friday afternoon, and I'm surfing the web when I should be working on a tedious translation for an ungrateful client who, I know, screwed up the last job I did for them with their own incorrections (if I could remember where I saw that wonderful term used the other day, I'd give credit, but I can't).

Anyway, I must stop surfing now, before I get any angrier at all the incompetent nincompoops out there offering translation services.

Languages24seven.com, an anonymous website believed to be based in India (according to its latest cattle-call job posting on Proz.com), is a "splendid" example. Below a menu offering, among other things, "langauge services" [sic], the introduction reads:

We at languages24seven.com thrive to give you the professional services in all aspects of language from translation to transcreation, from type setting to website localisation and from interpreting services to cultural consulting. We proudly shoulder this responsibility with a sense of business partnership than as an agency.

If they can't even write coherent English on their own website, why the hell would anyone entrust a translation job to these idiots?

Rant over.

The translator's vanishing act

In a comment to my previous post on Writers Worth Day, Sam Berner asks:

So tell me - you don't believe in the translator's invisibility, do you, if you see yourself as a writer? I am struggling with this "invisibility" issue, trying to fathom where it comes from - which sacred cannon - and would love to hear your thoughts on it.

I'm not sure that viewing myself as a writer is necessarily incompatible with translator invisibility. If a text is well translated, by someone with good writing skills, then it should read like a piece of original prose in the target language. The fact that it's a translation is therefore invisible.

On the wider question, though, and when it comes to literary translation, I think Sam has a point. Why is translator invisibility considered by some to be such a holy grail? Why should the translator, alone among creative professionals, be invisible? Shouldn't translators be viewed, like actors, musicians, dancers and stage directors, as artists in their own right and as interpreters of the original author's work?

Writers Worth Day

Appropriately timed to coincide with my birthday, the second annual Writers Worth Day takes place today. This online event is the brainchild of Lori Widmer, a Philadelphia-based writer and editor, and is designed to promote the fair market value of writers through education, awareness and ongoing support.

In a press release, Lori explains that Writers Worth Day was established in response to the increasing number of job postings that offer little, if any, compensation for the amount of work expected. Sound familiar? That's because writers and translators are close cousins not only in terms of core skills, but also in terms of the issues they face in their professional lives: how to attract good clients, educate the punters, get paid on time, and so on.

I increasingly view myself as a writer as well as a translator. For me, well-paying work that requires creative copywriting skills in the target language alongside a thorough grasp of the source language and subject matter is the way to go. Adding value to the translation in this way makes it much easier to justify charging a high rate. Despite the prevailing doom and gloom and the best efforts of the mediocrity-mongers who run the big translation agencies, there are clients out there who recognize quality and are willing to pay for it.

So, happy Writers Worth Day everyone! And if today, of all days, a client has the temerity to challenge you on your rates, take a cue from the L'Oréal commercials and tell them coolly and calmly: "Because I'm worth it!"

Taxes and trilliums

Kate Lambert wrote recently about a dilemma faced by many freelancers working across international borders: Do you take the same public holidays as your family and local community, or do you adjust your holiday schedule to match your clients'? Also on the theme of public holidays and festivities, Jill Sommer had an interesting post about German Walpurgis Night and May Day traditions.

Here in Canada, midnight on April 30 has a completely different significance: it's the deadline for filing your income tax return. So long as the envelope is postmarked April 30, no late-filing penalty will be charged. Some post offices stay open until midnight to accept tax returns. Having been up until 5 a.m. working on my taxes two nights last week, I was relieved to put my return in the mail a whole five hours before the deadline. I was even more relieved when I realized that I could sleep in the next morning; thanks to the May Day holiday in Europe, there were unlikely to be any urgent emails from clients waiting for me.

With tax season over, the most potent symbol of spring's arrival for many Canadians—and Ontarians in particular—is the sight of a carpet of trilliums in the woods. I snapped this picture yesterday on one of the local walking trails. The glint of the white blooms carpeting the forest floor brought back memories of Scottish snowdrop woods in February. The smell of barbecuing in the air reinforced the sense that spring had finally sprung.

It seems to me that trilliums occupy a similar place in the Canadian psyche to that of the smultronställe—the wild strawberry patch—in the Swedish mindset: a "secret" spot off the beaten track, often associated with happy personal or childhood memories and providing a brief respite from winter gloom and worldly cares. Including taxes.