littleworkpage

Yesterday a few of us from the office went   to a well-known language school in town and spoke for about an hour to a variety of students about the magical joy of working as a translator for our agency. Despite a slightly lower headcount than expected (bloody students! ;), it went well and lots of questions were asked at the end, which is always a sign that interest is being feigned. Err, paid. When my turn came for ten minutes on ‘You and Your Proofreader’, I was already half stoned on a heady cocktail of prescription medication for this angina (which in less than 24 hours of taking it, is already vastly improving the situation, hooray for medicine!). Still, I managed to get something together in my head and spit it out to the assembled masses, and I’d like to offer a précis of those ramblings to you today. I’ll try not include all the bits that began with ‘errr... so as I was saying... what was I saying?...’. In the beginning, there are a few different ways of checking a ...

Just a quick one today as my angina is kicking me in the dup with big, hob-nailed boots. I’ve got three or four different tabletki to try and beat this thing, but as we all know, the best medicine is a nice, relaxing translation. ;) This item at least has the virtue of being plucked fresh from the pages of a brand-new text I’m working on right now. It’s also something I’ve been seeing quite often for quite some time – the misuse and abuse of the word civilisation , including use of an invented adjectival form! Look ye here, oh civilised reader: 1a) The civilisation development brought a huge progress in science and technology. 1b) The development of civilisation brought huge progress in science and technology. 2a) Street-level Civilisational improvements include plumbing, indoor toilets, electricity, libraries and public health services. 2b) Street-level signs of civilisation include plumbing, indoor toilets, electricity, libraries and public health. OED Def. civilization (also...

APRIL 7 - MAY 17, 2011 Opening Reception: Thursday, April 7, 7-10 PM ARTJAIL 50 Eldridge Street 6th floor between Canal and Hester Streets Open 10:30 am to 6:30 pm Monday to Friday Margie Black, Sarah Bliss, Marcy Brafman, Amanda Browder, Elisabeth Condon, Vince Contarino, Beata Drozd, Gabert Farrar, Sophia Flood, Alicia Gibson, Chambliss Giobbi, Rachael Gorchov, Susan Hamburger, Deb Karpman, Yuliya Lanina, Liz-N-Val, Paul Loughney, Cybele Lyle, Norma Markley, Christina Massey, Joel Morrison, Mary Murphy, Guy Nelson, Jeremy Olson, Steve Page, Leemour Pelli, Lilliana Pereira, Mary Pinto, Mark Power, Grace Roselli, Hagar Sadan, Pierre St. Jacques, Meghann Snow, Claudia Sperry, Ginna Triplett This exhibition explores the use of collage as an artistic medium, dissecting its impulses and agendas while providing a wide cross-spectrum of its usage in contemporary art. It addresses the role of material culture in mediating our shared view of reality, the notion of a borrowed aesthetic, and how...

A mixed week this one was; our translating rollercoaster went down, down the spiral of Missed Entries and climbed up, up to the heights of Guest Columnist . Personally, I really enjoyed being able to bring a different voice and a fresh outlook, particularly as it came from within your own ranks. There will be more, much more of that sort of thing. Unfortunately I’ve been so busy lately myself with the old eyeballing of words thing that I haven’t had time to send out my carefully-conceived-down-the-pub-after-three-G&Ts wywiady. In other news, I fiddled around a bit back-stage and added some colourful buttons down the side, and an apparently non-functional FaceBook ‘Like’ button. I was assured we didn’t need an actual fan page for this, but oh well. At least I know how to do all that should the need, want or desire arise. What do you think, would it be cool/funny/life-enhancing to ‘like’ articles here that you, err, like? Looking ahead, I can safely say we’re going to have more ...

Ahsan Ahmadi, also known as Ali, received an award in our full school assembly today. Ali is a refugee from Afghanistan,who with his family has been in New Zealand for only 8 months, received the award from the Addington Action Committee for outstanding contribution to the Addington Community, in the weeks after the 22 February earthquake. Presenting the award was Mike Peters of the Addington Action Committee and Jim Anderton MP. After the earthquake struck, Ali got in touch with the AAC and with his Dad spent the next two weeks helping to clear rubble, dig toilets and deliver food and water to people in need. We are all very proud of this young man, who is an inspiration and a wonderful role model. Well done Ali. Ali was also featured in todays Christchurch Press.

Idios, idiosyncratic, idiomatic, idiom... All begin with the Greek root idio , meaning ‘private’ and indicating something like ‘of the self’. It’s perhaps ironic then that common idiom, which begins as language private or internal to a person or group, spreads out and becomes commonplace. It’s also frustrating for translators, because literal translations of idiom rarely work well enough to make them worth the effort. Today we have a special treat as we’re joined for this, our inaugural look at idioms, by a very good friend of the Article. She’s an experienced translator who found a job juggling English-Polish translations in visual media, and believe me, when she speaks, I listen. I asked her for a quote on the subject and she came back a couple of minutes later with this, so let’s turn it over to her now and see what she has to say. Please give a very warm welcome to Dotty. Take it away Dots! *** One might think that translating idioms is a piece of cake. All you have to do is...

Ah ha, bet you thought I was going to miss today's post too eh? I'll admit, the thought was tempting -- the coughing and sneezing and nappy-filling continues unabashed here at Chez Jim. But then I thought, come on old chap, can't let the readers down again eh? Bad form that. Shame it's not a Bad Article though eh? We could write about that. Ha ha, Jim said, and we toasted our own brilliant wit. Hours later, when the worst of the fever had passed, I awoke to concerned looks. Are you alright?, my family enquired. You were raving and laughing to yourself for a while there. Hmm, thought I, briefly recollecting what I had assumed to be a lucid mental debate. Better play stupid here and get on with the blogging thing. Fine thanks, I replied, and hurried off, abandoning the back-to-front jacket on the way. And so here we are again, and after that rather lengthy introduction, let's get down to business. Whilst I was drifting in and out of reality this week, an unresolved bi...

First of all, apologies for the absence of yesterday’s week in review; the two Small Proofreaders are chory znowu and my hands were full dealing with them most of the day. Having said that, let’s dive back into another week of juicy information, beginning with a look at something that, whilst not a common species, is still certainly worthy of attention. Common Usage 1) The deluxe model offers both horizontal and vertical regulation.            2) Tilt and lean can both be regulated from the main panel.               Better Usage 1) The deluxe model offers both horizontal and vertical adjustment. 2) Tilt and lean can both be adjusted from the main panel. OED Definition   1- (v) control or maintain the rate or speed of (a machine or process) (also ¹) so that it operates properly. 2- control (something, especially a business activity) by means of rules and regul...

Today, our school was privileged to be visited by eight police officers, including members of the Australian Federal police force. These officers are in Christchurch to help in the aftermath of the earthquake, and are visiting schools as part of a Reassurance Team. The aim of this team is to talk to children about the earthquake and to acknowledge that there are lots of different people in uniform from all over the world helping in our city at the moment. The officers spent time with different classrooms answering questions and listening to the children tell their own stories. Later the children asked many questions of the Australian officers, including "How did they get here?" " By Quantas 757 "was the reply. The child responded "Oh , so you didnt come to Addington in a taxi" Wonderful!!! There were also many gun, taser and pepper spray queries! It was a great visit that both the adults and the children enjoyed, and helped reinforce for us all the spe...

How does Google choose which items to display at the top of their lists? It depends on many factors (80 or so, I've heard) amongst them factors which don't depend on the contents of the page itself whether the item is on a popular site whether there are many links to the item whether the item appears as a link on a popular page Ranking items is useful, but some programs ( trueknowledge for example) try to do more, attempting to construct new knowledge. The process is not dissimilar to what humans do when they perform literature searches - pulling at loose threads, following leads, making connections, and building an "internal map". It's similar to what people do when familiarising themselves with an area of knowledge, giving structure (or even meaning) to amorphous data. Chase and Simon in an article mainly about chess (1973) surmised that to become an expert required about 10 years of experience - the result of learning roughly 50,000 chunks of info...

Hello again, friends in translation! Welcome back to our shambling, rambling stumbling traipse through the early days of being a translator. Following our previous looks at education and qualifications, this week we’re going to have a brief look at some of the material investments we can make, from books and software to, umm, books and software. There’s quite a lot more to say about the software part which we’ll focus on in more detail later, and a certain big-name website (which again, we will be looking at in more detail in the future) gets a name-check, so settle down with some kawa or herbata, and let’s crack on. CAT makes me sneeze   IT Skills. Translators have a lot of different computer software options available to them ( Trados and Wordfast are probably the two most well-known (and expensive)), and although it’s not essential to know how to use a Computer Aided Translation tool, it’s still good to know. Some agencies like, or even require you to use such tools, be...

The problem here is a fairly common one – legitimate words that are mostly used correctly, but that have negative connotations which make them either easily misinterpreted or that make the sentence they sits in sound weird and inappropriate. This is most clear in (1) and (2). You can imagine some comic villain at UMP with a black top-hat, twirling a long black moustache around his finger as he writes it, cackling away insanely. In the Warsaw example, it sounds more like a confession than anything else. Have a look: Common Usage 1)   Warsaw is one of the biggest beneficiaries when it comes to exploitation of European Union funds. 2)   Come and join us in Poznań, where our exploitation of national and European resources is reasonable and effective.  3) Exploitation of local labour sources is recommended. Better Usage 1)   Warsaw is one of the biggest beneficiaries when it comes to utilisation of European Union funds. 2)   Come and join us in Poznań, whe...

Welcome back friends, did you take a moment to do the quiz last week? We’ll have a fresh set for you next time, but for now let’s have a look at Round One. To make life easier, here are the original questions: 1) Funding will eventually reach a whole-country scale throughout the EU. 2) The plans of the City Hall include modernisation of the ring road. 3) Popovic was proud to announce that an all-country team of experts would be examining the case. 4) We would like to inform that the 13.00 bus to Olsztyn has been cancelled. 5) Since joining the EU, more and more beers of the brewery are selling overseas. 6) They are, without a doubt, one of the best in Europe dance teams, and all totally hot! 7) The tears of the angel dripped onto her feet as she sat alone on the swing. 8) Parking of 6-axle vehicles in the nearest area of the Old Town is prohibited. Now let’s look at each one together. Remember that these are all based on common examples of mistakes in EN tra...