Guest Post: Launching CLEAR Global: Translators without Borders Is 10 and Ready for More!

by Jennifer Cajina-Grigsby

Translators without Borders begun when a small group of people translated information for aid organizations helping people hit by the Haiti earthquake 10 years ago. Driven to close the language gaps hindering critical humanitarian and international development efforts worldwide, the rapidly growing Translators without Borders team has achieved a lot since our founding. For example, we:

• Translated information following the earthquake in Haiti, tsunamis in Indonesia, cyclones in Mozambique, and hurricanes in the USA.
• Translated 1,900 Wikimedia medical articles in 83 languages, which helped over 40 million people access free and accurate health information.
• Created multilingual chatbots to give people in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria accurate and reliable COVID-19 and Ebola information (read about Translators without Borders’ COVID-19 global response and glossary).
• Started creating language maps in over 60 languages for organizations to better prepare for multilingual communication.

This would have been impossible without the support of donors, partners, and our community of linguists, translators, and local experts: over 60,000 volunteers contributing time and skills for a world without language barriers. Some have been with us for almost 10 years. Their experience working with Translators without Borders allows them to polish their translation skills, learn about the language technology we’re building, and get a solid foundation for their careers in translation.

Translators Without Borders recognizes the work of its volunteers by giving recommendations, references, and milestone certificates when the volunteers reach a certain word threshold. We foster a relationship with our community based on reciprocity, fairness, and shared values. Our community members work when they can, producing content for people who speak marginalized languages.

Thanks to this community, our impact has increased over the past years. Since our foundation, we have significantly grown as an organization, but much is yet to be done. Thus, with Translators without Borders at our core, we have evolved our brand to CLEAR Global, which includes CLEAR Insights and CLEAR Tech: entities working together for a more just society. Our goal is to make sure that the four billion people who speak a marginalized language are listened to, and can get the information they need, want, and understand. That’s what CLEAR is all about: Community, Language, Engagement, Accountability, and Reach.

ClearGlobal website

To go with this brand evolution, we’re running a campaign to lead us into the next 10 years. We want to raise funds for building diverse, scalable language technologies based on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Our teams and partners will use them to better communicate with local communities. We’ll implement solutions to help people who speak marginalized languages to ask for, receive, and share vital information.

As a nonprofit, we’re always seeking support. If our cause and growth resonates with you, you can join our community right now. If you want to do more to support our growth, you can also help us spread the word about our “10 years on. Ready for more” campaign or even make a donation. Every contribution counts and will contribute to improving other people’s lives.

About the author:

Jennifer Cajina-Grigsby, before joining Translators without Borders, worked as a freelance translator for US nonprofits. Jennifer has always been passionate about language diversity and how to help bridge the global language divide. Her desire to do more led her to Translators without Borders, a nonprofit helping people get vital information, and be heard, whatever language they speak. 

More about translation at the Hugo Awards

In addition to the Hugo for the best novel, a translated work also won the award for the best novelette: “The Day the World Turned Upside Down”, by Dutch author Thomas Olde Heuvelt, translated by Lia Belt (Lightspeed, 04-2014).

And since neither of the other two fiction awards had a winner this year, that means translations won in all the fiction categories in which an award was given. Congratulations to the authors, and to their translators!

For the first time ever, a translated novel wins the Hugo Award

"The Three Body Problem" has won the 2015 Hugo Award for best novel.

This is the first time that the prize has been given to a translated work. Congratulations to Cixin Liu, the novel's author, and to Ken Liu, its translator. Congratulations also to the publisher, for doing the right thing and prominently displaying the translator's name alongside the author's, on the cover of the book:

At least one translator in Italy is happy with her job

We translators are often a grumpy lot, ready to complain about many things.

It's refreshing to see someone who admits that "Working as a translator in Italy is the best job I’ve ever had"

(from the Irish times).

Top 100 Language Lovers 2015

Just as it has done every year since 2008, LexioPhiles has organized the "Top 100 Language Lovers 2015" competition, which is currently at the voting stage.

You can vote for your favorite blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and YouTube channels, in several different categories:

• Language Learning Blogs: blogs about the language learning process, both from the learners and teachers perspectives. 
• Language Professionals Blogs: blogs by people using languages in their profession, such as translators or interpreters. 
• Language Facebook Pages: Facebook Pages related to language topics, such as dictionaries, translation tools, language lovers communities and more. 
• Language Twitter Accounts: Twitterers who share content about languages. 
• Language YouTube Channels: Youtubers who vlog about languages.

By following the links above you can get directly to each category, where you can see your favorite language sites or accounts, or perhaps find new ones you didn't know.

This year, About Translation has been nominated in the Language Professionals Blogs category. If you like this blog, and want to vote for it, you can do so by clicking on this button:

...and if you decide to vote for this blog, thank you!

The First Stridonium Conference - Cambridge, 2014

We were recently enticed to visit Cambridge, England, by the interesting program of the first Stridonium Conference.

King's College - Cambridge

Anyway, the conference was a good excuse for visiting a bit of England that we had never visited before: we were especially keen on seeing both Oxford and Cambridge.
The event was held at the Møller Centre of Churchill College: a particularly pleasant environment for such a cozy conference, that was intended as a meeting of both translators and people from the world of business and foreign affairs.
There weren't many participants at this first Stridonium conference, but the group, though small, was diverse. There were translators, teachers of translation from several different universities, a few students, some translation company representatives, and people from the world of foreign affairs and business.
The presentations were all of excellent quality:

• Andrew Wood, a solicitor specialized in advising Dutch companies that want to do business in Britain, or British companies that want to operate in the Netherlands, gave a presentation about the importance of being aware of different communication styles when conducting negotiations, as well as various potential problems when translating from a common-law country (such as England) to a civil law one, such as the Netherlands.
• Susannah Poulton, culture and language adviser for UK Trade and Investment, mentioned the difficulties of providing advice to small companies that want to do business abroad, but that don't understand the necessity of planning any translation and language work well in advance, and asked for advice about how to persuade such small businesses that translation, and especially well-planned translation, is very important for succeeding abroad.
• Charles Grant, a foreign policy expert, talked about the real possibility (worst case scenario) that Britain might leave the EU after 2017, following a referendum, and how that might actually finally trigger the secession of Scotland from the UK (and subsequent application of Scotland for EU membership).
• Sir Colin Budd, a retired diplomat and former UK ambassador to the Netherlands, explained why language is key to effective diplomacy, the importance of knowing language and cultural nuances for both diplomats and translators, and how for diplomats (and of course for the translators that help them communicate), knowing, for example, how to be consciously ambiguous is sometimes essential.
• Jeff Heasman, an expert in international business communications, addressed the danger of "Chinese whispers", that is, the danger of unintended bad communication due to the difficulty of understanding overly verbose or complicated documents, advocating instead the use of plain English.
• Christina Guy spoke briefly on the importance of "getting language right", that is, not fall into some of the blunders that amuse translators and cost business real money.
• The conference ended with a four-person panel (consisting of Mr. Wood, Ms Poulton, Jeff Heasman and myself), which fielded questions from the attendees on various aspects of international translation.

  

  The panel: Schiaffino, Wood, Heasman, Poulton

All in all, a pleasant conference, well organized and interesting, well worth going.

Stridonium: an internet community for professional translators

Guest post by Christina Guy

After my guest post of last week, Riccardo asked me to provide a brief description of Stridonium. I'm often asked about the name. It's called Stridonium after the birthplace of Jerome, the patron saint of translators.

Stridonium was set up five years ago with the help of colleagues who were interested in creating a private internet community for professional translators. As you can see from the site’s home page on the site, we aimed to create a place where seasoned professionals and dedicated newcomers could meet to exchange views, seek advice and ultimately to help further the interests of – and hopefully raise standards in – the translation industry.

Basically, we wanted to provide a venue for professional translators to interact in a collegial spirit of give and take, with no advertising and no attempts to sell products or services to members (and no moderators). The decision to make Stridonium a private forum was a conscious one, so that members’ posts lie beyond the reach of Google and other search engines (although because the private nature of the site forbids direct viewing by non-members, we did produce a presentation to give language professionals who are interested in joining Stridonium an insight into the community). It was also a conscious decision to apply relatively strict membership criteria.

Over time, the site has also become a platform for organising a limited number of specialist workshops and lectures and of course the "Business in Communication" conference in March this year. Also for this year, we have organised three lectures by Stuart Bugg (for lawyers, legal editors and specialist legal translators) and we're looking forward to lectures in the autumn given by Jeff Heasman and Mark Childress. We always apply to the ATA and the Dutch translators’ association NGTV for continuing professional development points.

And our latest project (still in its infancy) is to offer the services of our translators individually or in teams. More about that after the conference!

--- O ---

Chartered Linguist Christina Guy is a Dutch to English legal translator and interpreter based in The Netherlands. As a native of the UK with long experience in providing language services in the legal, commercial and diplomatic sectors, she is a passionate advocate of efficient quality. Several years ago, she and other committed language specialists established the translators' forum Stridonium .

The Stridonium 2014 Conference

Guest Post by Christina Guy

First of all, thanks to Riccardo for inviting me to write a guest post about the Stridonium conference in Cambridge this year.

For readers who aren’t familiar with Stridonium, it was set up in 2009 as a venue for professional language specialists. Originally a private site for professional exchange and support for translators, it is now exploring alternatives to further the interests and raise the standards of the translation sector.

Most of the Stridonium site is open to members only, but you can get more information by visiting our Home Page, or our Mission Statement.

The Stridonium 2014 Conference

Communicating in Business – Getting Language Right

Stridonium will host this conference on 24 March 2014 at the Møller Centre in Cambridge.

The aim of the Stridonium conference is to engage with businesses. It will emphasise to an audience of businessmen and language specialists the importance of getting language right and – maybe more importantly – point out the pitfalls of getting it wrong.

When corporations spend so much time, money and effort on texts in their own language, isn't it only logical that they be as meticulous about the quality of communication in other languages?

Unfortunately, as many of us know, that doesn't always follow. Translation in particular is too often an afterthought or an “add-on”, with everything from marketing texts to crucial legal documents being bundled off unceremoniously by a hapless secretary to the first translation agency she can find on Google.

So this conference will help businesses and at the same time raise the profile of quality services as a distinct segment within the language industry. It will emphasise the benefits of giving language higher priority, getting the right language specialists on board and making them a more integral part of the team and the process. With more and more companies trading across borders, this message has never been more important.

Stridonium's initiative has the support of some high-calibre speakers with backgrounds in politics, business and diplomacy, including:

• Sir Colin Budd KCMG, former British Ambassador to the Netherlands
• Charles Grant CMG, Director of the Centre for European Reform and Vice Chair of the Executive of Business for New Europe
• Jeff Heasman, Director at the Pyramid Group
• Andrew Wood, Consultant at Birketts LLP and member of the Executive Board of the Dutch-British Chamber of Commerce

All of our speakers will draw on their wide knowledge and a wealth of anecdotal experience to illustrate the importance of using the right words – and the consequences of using the wrong ones.

They will explain the benefits of:

• setting company-wide language policy
• effective legal and business communication
• using the right language for effective advertising campaigns
• avoiding cultural pitfalls
• saving money by buying wisely

In the last afternoon session we will wrap up by offering businesses practical information on how to procure language services, what to look for and where to look.

To register for the conference, click here.

Mediterranean Editors & Translators - Language, Culture and Identity

Registration is now open for Mediterranean Editors and Translators’ 9th annual meeting

Language, Culture and Identity

24-26 October 2013, Monastery of Poblet, Tarragona, Catalonia

www.metmeetings.org

Happy International Translation Day!

Every day is a translation day here – but since today is “International Translation Day”, I’d like to share with you two images you might like:



We found these painted tiles several years ago, I don’t remember if it was in Assisi or in Urbino. They were in a ceramics shop, together with similar tiles for many other professions and crafts. As soon as we saw them we decided to get a pair, and they have hung outside our office ever since.

I especially like that both translators are reading with a smile on their faces… perhaps, they are happy to use a quill (no blue screen of death for them!), and work at a more sedate pace.

Happy St. Jerome’s Day, everyone!

Another giant of translation studies passes away

Eugene Nida, a giant of translation studies, passed away on August 24.
You can find a long and interesting post about him, his importance in translation studies and bible translation, and especially his famous notion of dynamic equivalence in Susan Bernofsky's Translationista blog.

Requiescat in pace: Peter Newmark passed away on July 12

I met Peter Newmark when I attended a translation seminar at the Polytechnic of Central London in 1990. Newmark was an excellent teacher: always interesting, able to intersperse talk of practical and theoretical aspects of translation with anecdotes of his experiences as translator and interpreter while serving with the British army in Italy during WWII.

Although that seminar was all too brief, I learned much from Peter Newmark – and meeting him also led to his books: unlike most books in translation studies, which easily become too technical and theoretical, Peter Newmark's books are of real use for the practicing translator (I’m especially fond of his two collections of “Paragraphs on Translation”, and of course the name of this blog is a direct homage to Newmark's “About Translation”).

Antony Pym wrote an obituary on the European Society for Translation Studies’ site; Margaret Rogers wrote a longer personal note, published on the Notes on Translation Studies blog.

International Legal Translation Conference in Lisbon, October 7 and 8, 2011

If you are a legal translator, the International Legal Translation Conference that will be held in Lisbon on October 7 and 8 could be an interesting even to go to:

The Conference will feature two full days of practical learning sessions -- translation and terminology workshops (in Portuguese, English, Spanish, more languages if possible) -- for the professional translator and interpreter of legal materials.

Among the session abstracts there are several that sound interesting and of practical value for legal translators.

Attendance to the conference counts towards earning ATA's continuing education points.

I won't be able to attend this year (we are going to the ATA conference in Boston in October), but I'm seriously tempted for the future: I have very fond memories of the summer month I spent in Lisbon many years ago, attending a summer course in Portuguese and discovering a truly lovely city.

2011 Conference | Colorado Translators Association

We'll be in Boulder this weekend for the first ever Colorado Translators Association mid-year conference. Corinne and the organizing committee have done a great job of promoting the conference and selecting interesting presentation (maybe I shouldn't say so, since one of them is our own presentation on Trados 2007 v. 2009).

The conference will be complemented on Sunday by ATA certification exams, and by two Trados training sessions.

After the conference, I'll post the slides from our presentation here in About Translation.

Watercooler is going to change its home

You may have noticed the link to Watercooler is no longer displayed on the right. Andrew Bell is planning to move it from its present location as Ning network to some other service (this because of the changes that are happening at Ning).

In the meantime, the link to Watercooler.com would no longer work. For the time being Watercooler can be accessed at the following address: http://translationandlanguage.ning.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network

My first ProZ ban

A thread of mine has been banned from ProZ (I confess, I like spending some time there, reading and participating in the discussion threads).

My original post was deemed in breach of the catch-all rule # 1 (“The ProZ.com forums are provided solely for discussions within ProZ.com's scope”). Since that scope is then as broad as it is ill defined, the rule could be interpreted as “anything can be banned if we feel like it”.

My post was a gentle poke at all those Italian translators who think that the institution of an “Albo dei traduttori” would be a miraculous cure for all translation ills, from low rates to late payments. Never mind that they never explain exactly how the “Albo dei Traduttori” would cure those ills, never mind that it has very little chance of actually being instituted, and never mind that, even if it were, in the form it has been proposed it would very likely soon be found to violate UE anti-trust laws and regulations.
I sent to the ProZ staff member who decided to ban the thread the following message:

What exactly was in breach of the rules in my (off-topic) post about the Italian "Albo dei traduttori"? It was lighthearted satire, contained no profanity, no politics, no personal attacks against anybody, and was germane to the discussion in the Italian forum (where some translators see the institution of an "Albo dei traduttori" as a panacea for all translation woes).

I imagine you won't answer, since the site's rules are fuzzy enough that something can always be found in breach of this or that purposely ill-defined and overbroad rule, but I would really like to know what was so offensive about the thread.

I don’t expect the message to be answered, of course.

Update

"I sent to the moderator..." corrected to "I sent to the ProZ staff member...", as it was not an Italian forum moderator who quashed the thread, but a member of the ProZ staff.

TM-Europe 2009

TM-Europe 2009 will be held on October 1st and 2nd in Warsaw. This year, the conference theme is Quality and Terminology Management, and Business Terms and Conditions for Translation and Localization Services.

In the 2008 TM-Global Translation and Localization Market Survey customers and providers alike reported that consistent high quality was the number one factor they take into account when managing processes or selecting a vendor, yet they had problems pin-pointing how quality is defined, measured and manifested.

The conference's schedule covers an interesting range of topics, among which:

• a workshop on translation and localization technology (Daniel Goldschmidt and Jost Zetsche)
• a discussion between customers and translation companies on how they do business together
• a panel and several presentations on terminology management
• a panel and presentation on quality management
• a presentation on different approaches to selling translation in the US and Europe (Dave Smith of Lingua-Lynx)
• a post-conference workshop on Selling Translation

TM-Europe is the annual conference of the Polish Association of Translation Agencies (PSBT) and is organised by PSBT and TM-Global.
For more information on the conference visit www.tm-europe.org.

A translation giant in trouble?

According to an article in the Boston Business Journal, Lionbridge will cut 325 positions globally (about 8% of its staff).
Liobridge recorded a $ 114 million loss in 2008.
The CEO's statement appears to be a good example of pure corporatese: "...moving forward as a leaner company while maintaining our focus on innovation and customer quality".
Best of luck to all the Lionbridge staff we know personally.

(Hat tip to Luigi Muzii of il Barbaro for the link)

Touchy Translators and Know-it-alls

A recent discussion thread in the Italian forum of ProZ highlighted quite clearly two defects to which we translators seem to be particularly prone: knowing it all, and being extremely touchy.

A colleague opened the thread warning that negative comments posted on the Blue Board about Italian translation agencies could easily lead to being sued for libel. Other colleagues promptly voiced their disbelief, mostly saying that one could not succumb in libel suit if what he or she had written was the truth. The original poster started to take these comments as personal attacks, and the tone of those that had voiced their disbelief also started to degenerate towards sarcasm.

I don't want to rehash the discussion, which is still under way. What I found unpleasant, but typical of too many of us was:

1. Freely jumping in with our opinions, certain of the truth of them, but without bothering to check first


2. Immediately taking contrary opinions as personal attacks


3. Rapidly escalating the discussion, with growing acrimony

The thread I mention above is only an example, but I could easily mention many others, unfortunately often.

Many of us seem to feel constantly unappreciated and under attack: from other colleagues or from translation agencies (many write of translation companies as enemies always out to swindle poor translators, and not as customers in good faith).

As translators we often know a lot of things, given the nature of our profession, and many of us are quite ready to impart the wealth of our vast knowledge unto others. (Unfortunately, most of us don't know nearly as much as we pretend, and not even as much as we think we do).

I sometimes wish we were better: that we more readily held our tempers, and checked our facts before speaking out.


By the way: Apparently according to Italian law the truth of a statement is often not a valid defense in a libel suit.