By Matthew Schlecht I was contacted some months ago by a vendor management person from one of the agencies with whom I do a reasonable volume of work. She asked me whether I would consider dropping my requirement for a minimum charge from my rate structure, since if I were to do so, I would receive many more project inquiries from them. Presumably, these project inquiries would involve small word counts, and the agency could save money on my fee if I were to bill strictly according to word count. I felt this was a good teachable moment, so I …
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By Amy Lesiewicz A few months ago I decided to attend my first National Meeting of the American Chemical Society. They have two National Meetings per year; the one I attended drew over 13,000 attendees for 5 full days of technical sessions, symposia, poster sessions, lunches, a large exhibition, and networking events. The event was too large for the Dallas Convention Center; sessions were held at half a dozen nearby hotels as well. The ACS is the largest professional association in the world, and it encompasses all fields of chemistry from petroleum to nanomaterials to pharmaceuticals to polymers, and the …
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It seems that many scientific and technical translators take a roundabout path in their careers. Is that true for you? Tell us about how you became a translator with your specialization. I was never interested in physics, chemistry or any other technical subject while a student. History and literature were my favorite subjects. In college, I majored in French and minored in Renaissance 90s and was planning to become a teacher. A year of study abroad in Lyon changed all that. On a lark, I took a translation class at Lyon 3. It was a light-bulb moment: I realized that …
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Provided by Abigail Dahlberg, the following list of glossaries and thesauri is a sampling of the many resources available to translators active working in the environmental field. These links are provided without any guarantee as to their accuracy or completeness. As always, please use your best judgment and discretion when consulting these resources. Water glossaries (multilingual) https://www.emwis.net/thematicdirs/glossaries Glossary of environmental health terms (US) https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/glossary/ Glossary of environmental science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_environmental_science Environmental thesaurus (DE, EN) https://data.uba.de/umt/de.html Environmental terminology and discovery service https://glossary.eea.europa.eu/ Wind energy glossary (EN, DE, ES, FR, DK) https://www.windpowerwiki.dk/index.php?title=Glossary Environmental dictionary EnDic (FI, ET, EN, FR, DE, SV, LT, LV, …
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Reviewed by Joan L. Wallace With the number of hip replacements increasing as the population ages, translators are bound to encounter more of them. Joanne Archambault’s presentation this year provided an excellent introduction. As a translator specializing in orthopedic translations, with a PhD and industry experience in the field who works directly with French surgeons and manufacturers to translate in this field, Joanne is well qualified to present on this topic The presentation began with a review of the hip’s anatomy. To simplify it greatly, a total hip replacement (THR) entails replacing both sides of the hip joint, i.e., the …
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Reviewed by Karen Tkaczyk Christos Floros presents “Going All-In” So there I was, beginning to feel worn out on Saturday afternoon in San Antonio, wondering which session I ought to attend. I chose to support a friend who was giving his first session at an ATA conference. Christos Floros was speaking on one of his areas of subject-matter expertise, translating for the gambling industry. It had an intriguing title: “Going All-In”. I don’t gamble and have no intention of targeting translation clients in that industry but I do live in Nevada where general knowledge on the subject is remarkably useful. …
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ATA 54th Annual Conference, San Antonio, Texas, November 6-9, 2013 Session ST-11 “Beautiful Translations: Foundations for the Personal Care and Cosmetics Industry” presented by Karen Tkaczyk on November 8, 2013 Reviewed by Mery Molenaar It is late Friday afternoon in San Antonio, Texas, and I am attending the ATA conference session on Beautiful Translations. This is probably one of the most difficult timeslots of the entire conference as people are about to wind down after two full days of networking and conference sessions. Nevertheless, the room is packed and Karen starts with full enthusiasm, determined to teach us a thing …
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by Judy Jenner Those of us who had the chance to attend one of the two sessions given by the division’s distinguished speaker at the American Translators Association 54thAnnual Conference, which was held in San Antonio a few weeks ago, were in for quite a treat. I went to John Moffitt’s cleverly titled lecture “Earth Extinction Events: History and Future.” As someone with a keen interest in astronomy and physics, I thought that this session might be interesting and might remind me why I wisely chose not to major in physics in college (because it turns out I wasn’t good …
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ST-6 Time for a New Hip? Joanne Archambault, PhD (Saturday, 8:30am-9:30am; Intermediate; Presented in: English) Description from ATA website: Many surgeons consider total hip joint replacement to be the greatest surgical advance in the second half of the 20th century. Translating documents related to orthopedic implants requires knowledge of medicine (anatomy, surgery, etc.) and engineering concepts. The speaker will review various types of hip implants, including how they are manufactured and implanted into a patient. Key terms and primary research strategies will be discussed using examples in French and English. The information provided will be useful to translators working on …
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Matthew Schlecht will be presenting “Achieving a Synthesis: How Scientific / Technical Translation Resembles and Differs from Organic Chemical Synthesis” (ST-5, Friday 11:30am-12:30pm). From the abstract: Both organic synthesis in chemistry and the technical translation field employ processes of assembling components into a defined whole. Both require years of experience and training. Organic synthesis is represented by a universal symbolism that is mutually intelligible to chemists who don’t share a common language. Commonalities across languages exist for scientific and technical translation that are absent in other areas of translation. This session will cover multiple languages and examines how these processes are …