by Patrick Weill, CT Would you like to improve your level of success in translation or interpreting? If so, I have a four-part philosophy regarding some recent experiences I have had as a translator that I would like to share with you. The four S’s refer to skill, sales, self, and service. Developing these four areas allows us to unlock our potential and move more freely both professionally and personally. I’ve grouped them into two pairs: the more technical “skill and sales” pair, and the more personal “self and service” pair. The elements of each pair, and the two pairs …
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Have you considered presenting at the 58th Annual Conference in Washington, DC? Here’s how: Learn more about the process by watching Corinne McKay’s free webinar on the topic, “How to Write a Winning ATA Conference Proposal.” Available through ATA’s YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkiVHH7RcS. Contact your Division Administrators at divisionS_TD@atanet.org to discuss your ideas. Visit www.atanet.org/conferencesandseminars/proposal.php to submit your proposal by March 3. We have posted two articles on our blog: “A Review of Raquel Yáker Alazrachi’s Glossary of Petroleum, Environment and Natural Gas, English-Spanish, Spanish-English, Second Edition,” by Clarisa Moraña “The 4 S’s, part 1: Skill,” by Patrick Weill The …
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by Clarisa Moraña I still remember my first translation as a free-lancer, a triplex pump handbook for a leading oil & gas service company, more than 25 years ago. I knew for sure what a “pump” was, but the term “triplex pump” puzzled me! Besides, I had to deal, for the first time in my life, with specific terminology such as the name of every single pump component. The technical bilingual dictionaries highly recommended by our translation teachers at my university in Caracas failed to provide me with satisfactory terminology.
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Happy 2017 from the Science & Technology Division! Did you know that presentation proposals for the 58th Annual Conference in Washington, DC are due by Friday, March 3? We encourage members to start thinking about proposal topics now. For more information about the process, visit www.atanet.org/conferencesandseminars/proposal.php or contact your Division Administrators at divisionS_TD@atanet.org with your ideas. We have posted two new articles on our blog: “Beware of fraudulent websites that could ruin your reputation or worse: how I achieved a happy ending,” by Carola F. Berger “Review of Tapani Ronni’s Session on CRISPR at the ATA 57th Annual Conference,” by …
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by Carola F. Berger, PhD, CT A few months ago, I discovered, thanks to Google Alerts, that a fraudulent website was using my business name and excerpts of my copyrighted website content without my permission to advertise their dishonest services. My business name, which was used on the aforementioned site without my permission, has been registered in the State of California, United States of America, since 2010. The illegal use of copyrighted excerpts from my website violates the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
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By Brooke A. Cochran Tapani Ronni presented an extremely intriguing session on Friday, November 4, 2016 at the ATA 57th Annual Conference. entitled “CRISPR Gene Editing: From Tailored Gene Therapy to Species Engineering.” Between his PhD in genetics and his experience as an English to Finnish translator, he was at ease sharing his knowledge with the 30 or so attendees. Ronni began with a general history of gene editing. It was interesting to learn that it goes back to the 1970s but was not successfully applied until the late ‘80s. As such, gene editing is a relatively new branch of …
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Dear readers, my name is Patrick Weill, or Pat for short. I am delighted to have been accepted as a new blog editor and I am at your service for anything you may wish to publish here on our division’s blog.
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Dear readers, it is my pleasure to present this summary of the two-hour talk, given in November 2016 at the 57th Annual Conference of the American Translators Association in San Francisco, California, entitled “Seeing Voices: Using Light to Restore and Preserve Early Recorded Sound.” It was a fascinating inside look into the type and level of material that a scientific/technical translator or interpreter might have to render into another language. Dr. Haber, our division’s guest speaker for this year’s ATA conference, received a MacArthur Fellowshipin 2013 and he is the director of the IRENE project at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, …
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Come one, come all. Well, not everyone! This year I am giving a session that is part of the new Advanced Skills and Training (AST) Day on Wednesday, November 2, prior to the conference itself. This hands-on workshop costs extra and we have limited it to 25 participants, so that everyone can have personal attention. Here is the abstract for my half-day workshop: Technical translators with excellent technical writing skills stand out from the crowd, in the quality of their translations and in their income potential. This hands-on editing workshop for technical translators working into English will teach you how …
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Reviewed by Alicja Yarborough This was the first technical session on Thursday and the audience was full of enthusiasm to learn new things. Karen gave a very interesting and informative presentation on translating for the pharmaceutical, chemical, and cosmetics industries. She focused on the types of documents she translates, problems that have arisen, and texts that shouldn’t cause any issues. Karen primarily translates industrial, not clinical work (FR>EN). The customer is usually a manufacturer. Here are a few examples of documents she regularly works on, and some of her thoughts on each type: Quality Assurance Checklists and Certification Analysis These …