The Voice of Interpreters and Translators THE ATA Jan/Feb 2018 Volume XLVII Number 1

STEPPING OUT ON CAPITOL HILL: ATA’S FIRST ADVOCACY DAY IN WASHINGTON, DC A Publication of the American Translators Association afternoon for all languages into English. American Translators Association The success of our pre-conference 225 Reinekers Lane, Suite 590 Advanced Skills and Training Day has Alexandria, VA 22314 USA shown us that ATA members want Tel: +1.703.683.6100 hands-on, advanced level training, and Fax: +1.703.683.6122 we’re excited to expand our offerings in that area. E-mail: [email protected] FROM THE PRESIDENT During David Rumsey’s term as Website: www.atanet.org president, ATA became much more CORINNE MCKAY Editorial Board involved in lobbying and advocacy Geoff Koby (chair) [email protected] efforts, creating our Government Jeff Alfonso Twitter handle: @corinnemckay Relations Committee and holding our rst (sold-out!) Advocacy Day at the Lois Feuerle 2017 Annual Conference. (For more Corinne McKay on Advocacy Day, see page 8.) I’d like Mary McKee us to continue and even expand those Michael Wahlster efforts so that the voice of the language Ted Wozniak professions is heard by government Priorities! agencies and lawmakers. Publisher/Executive Director Walter Bacak, CAE often tell people that my main In some areas, we simply need to keep [email protected] problem in life is wanting to do doing what we’re doing. Our Public Relations program has been revitalized I everything. During my term as ATA Editor in recent years, and I will support the president, it will surely be impossible Jeff Sanfacon continuation and expansion of our PR to do everything I’d would like to do, [email protected] so I’ve set some priorities—the most efforts during my term. We’ve also made important projects that I’d like us to great strides in terms of parity between Advertising interpreters and translators in ATA, with accomplish between now and 2019. I’d Lauren Mendell our Credentialed Interpreter designation like to share some of these priorities [email protected] being rolled out in 2017. I look forward with you so that you know what’s on the Tel: +1.703.683.6100, ext. 3001 to exploring ways to further support and horizon for our Association. Fax: +1.703.683.6122 My rst priority, and one that we’re include interpreters within ATA. already working on, is a new website. Design & Production Our website is ATA’s public presence, and What’s on the horizon for our Blue House Design it’s a key resource for current members, www.bluehouse.us prospective members, and translation Association? Here are some clients. Over the years we’ve added (and The ATA Chronicle (ISSN 1078-6457) is published added!) to our website, so much so that priorities that I’d like us to six times per year by the American Translators it can be dif cult to nd the information accomplish between now and 2019. Association, 225 Reinekers Lane, Suite 590, you’re looking for. Additionally, our Alexandria, VA 22314 USA. Periodicals postage website is becoming outdated in terms of paid at Alexandria, Virginia, and additional design/usability and mobile-friendliness, mailing of ces. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The ATA Chronicle, 225 Reinekers both of which are critical in the online Finally, I look forward to working age. Fortunately, our website redesign with President-elect Ted Wozniak and Lane, Suite 590, Alexandria, VA 22314 USA. task force, chaired by Board member the rest of the ATA Board on ways to The American Translators Association (ATA) Karen Tkaczyk, is already at work bring the next generation of translators was established in 1959 as a not-for-pro t determining what we want in a new site. and interpreters into the fold. ATA professional society to foster and support the Stay tuned for updates! needs to target new graduates—those professional development of translators and Next, I’d like to see us expand our from translation and interpreting interpreters and to promote the translation and professional development opportunities, programs, and those wondering what interpreting professions. The subscription rate for adding at least one new offering to to do with their foreign language a member is $25 (included in the dues payment). our current slate of options. We have degrees. We need to reach out to the The U.S. subscription rate for a nonmember is $65. a thriving conference and an extensive many translators and interpreters in Subscribers in Canada and Mexico add $25; webinar series and webinar library. the U.S. who don’t yet know about ATA all other non-U.S. subscribers add $45. To this, I’d like to add in-person or haven’t yet joined our Association. Single copies are available for $7 per issue. seminars and/or online courses. By We need to show them that ATA the time you read this, we’ll have membership is the route to becoming a ©2018 American Translators Association tested this model with an in-person true language professional. certi cation exam prep session in I thank all 10,500+ ATA members Reprint Permission Boston, with the morning focused on for your support, and I look forward to Requests for permission to reprint articles the English>Spanish exam and the serving you during my time as president! should be sent to the editor of The ATA Chronicle at [email protected].

2 The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018 www.atanet.org Jan/Feb 2018 Volume XLVII CONTENTS Number 1

FEATURES 17 Copyediting for Stand-Out Style in Any Translation 6 A bit of organization at the Call for Nominations: beginning of a project can save ATA Directors you a lot of time and energy Do you know someone who would during the review stage. make a good potential candidate for ATA’s Board of Directors? If so, ATA’s Nominating and Leadership 20 Development Committee would Pro le of ATA 2016–2017 like to hear from you! School Outreach Contest Winner: Marybeth Timmermann When Marybeth spoke to students 8 in an advanced Spanish class Stepping Out on Capitol Hill: at the local high school, she ATA’s First Advocacy Day in impressed her audience with Washington, DC her French skills and real-life ATA’s 58th Annual Conference translation examples. in Washington, DC was an opportunity too good to pass up! It was the right time and place 23 for ATA’s rst Translation and 2017 ATA Honors and Awards Interpreting Advocacy Day. 11 Recipients This year’s recipients are… 11 Why Can’t I Raise My Rates? An Introduction to the ADVERTISING DIRECTORY Economics of Language Services 21 University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Learning how your services are www.utrgv.edu/en-us valued will provide a framework to 40 National Security Agency www.NSA.gov/Careers help you understand the market better, where you stand in it, and what you can do to improve your current position. COLUMNS 2 From the President 14 4 ATA Social Media Evidentiary Translation 4 Letters to the Editor for U.S. Courts 5 From the Executive Director To produce a translation that’s suitable for use as evidence, the 8 Outreach Report evidentiary translator must take 19 New Certi ed Members a speci c approach that differs 27 Business Practices greatly from best translation practice in other elds. 29 Interpreters Forum 30 Our World of Words 34 Resource Review 14

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Language of Sustainable we do best: facilitating communication. American Translators Development | Natalie Pavey Natalie’s list of resources is comprehensive Association I was so pleased to read that Natalie Pavey and helpful, and I look forward to October 6 had adapted her ATA57 presentation on exploring it more. A Native American sustainable development into an article in Finally, this article is full of pearls of ‘Sesame Street’ could help the November/December issue (“You’re translation wisdom: use plain language, save dying languages Not Fluent Yet! Speaking the Language of focus on good writing, trust your intuition, integrate your passions into “Focusing on children is Sustainable Development”). Our planet is at a crossroads. your work, and use your skills as a force crucial to saving the Continuing down our current path will for good and change. We could all stand Diné language. While there likely not end well. While many in the to be reminded of these a bit more often. are 7,600 traditional Diné- U.S. deny that climate change is real, Ben Karl | Reno, Nevada only speakers and about the world has agreed that humans are 169,000 Navajo-English responsible for an alarming rise in global “How Long Will It Take You to uent speakers still in the temperatures that is causing a host of Type This in English?” | Ros Schwartz United States, the language issues for people around the globe. These I love this! Translation is no different will not survive if children issues disproportionately affect those than writing from this point of view. are not learning it. Just in poverty (i.e., the people who most Every book, in my experience as a writer need assistance through the sustainable and translator, dictates its own timing as we help children learn development initiatives Natalie describes). and intensity. Unfortunately, when I English and Spanish through As the article points out, sustainable work in more corporate settings, such as educational programs like development initiatives are accelerating advertising and subtitles, the schedule is ‘Sesame Street,’ shouldn’t around the world. We, as translators, can set by the boss at the expense of quality. we do the same with Native be part of the solution by doing what Orlando Ferrand | Bronx, New York American languages?” Learn more: http://wapo.st/2BLSmV1

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Multilingual students at Cornell University help kids ride the road to reading | Cornell Chronicle: http://ow.ly/w6jV30himUz DEC 18 / @ATANET Learning a new language changes the way you perceive reality: http://bit.ly/2Bl8dGg DEC 4 / @ATANET

4 The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018 www.atanet.org FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR WALTER BACAK, CAE [email protected] Board Meeting Highlights

he ATA Board of Directors met October 28–29, 2017 in conjunction T with the Annual Conference in Washington, DC. Here are some highlights from the meeting. Welcome: President Corinne McKay welcomed the new Board of Directors, including President-elect Ted Wozniak, Secretary Karen Tkaczyk, Treasurer John Milan, and Directors Madalena Sánchez Zampaulo (re-elected), Geoff Koby (re- elected), and Elena Langdon. In addition, Tony Guerra was appointed to ll the director vacancy created with Karen Tkaczyk’s election to secretary. (Tony will serve until the October 2018 election.) They join Evelyn Yang Garland, Melinda González-Hibner, Cristina Helmerichs, Frieda Ruppaner-Lind, and Faiza Sultan. New Certi cation Exams: The Board approved the Certi cation Committee’s ■■ Governance and Communications The Board meeting summary is posted request to add English into Arabic and Committee: Ted Wozniak (chair) online. The minutes will be posted once they are approved at the next Board Chinese [simpli ed and traditional] into ■■ Government Relations Committee: meeting. Past meeting summaries and English to the program. The addition Corinne McKay (chair) of these language pairs is the result of minutes are also posted online at ■■ the efforts of two groups of dedicated Nominating and Leadership Develop- www.atanet.org/membership/minutes.php. volunteers. The English into Arabic work ment Committee: David Rumsey The next Board meeting will take place in group was led by Elias Shakkour and Website: Ad Hoc Website Committee Miami, Florida, January 20–21, 2018. As the Chinese into English group was led Chair Karen Tkaczyk briefed the Board on always, the meeting is open to all members, and members are encouraged to attend. by Jim Jones and Doug McNeal. The the committee’s evaluation of the current Certi cation Program now offers testing website and plans for building a new site. in 30 language combinations. The website development will be a top priority for 2018. Appointments: The Board approved the Be Sure to Renew Membership renewals have been mailed. following committee appointments: Public Relations: Public Relations Committee Chair Madalena Sánchez It’s easy to renew online, if you prefer. ■■ Ethics Committee: Jill Sommer (chair) Zampaulo updated the Board on the Just go to www.atanet.org/renew.php. and members Jennifer Guernsey and committee’s activities, including the articles (Renew your Active, Corresponding, or Tricia Perry written by the Writers Group that have been Associate membership for three years for ■■ Finance and Audit Committee: John published in over 50 trade and business $510 and save $75!) Thank you for your Milan (chair), Corinne McKay, Ted publications. She also reported on the wide support and membership in 2017. Wozniak, Karen Tkaczyk, Evelyn Yang range of speaking engagements by ATA We look forward to serving you in 2018! Garland, and Geoff Koby volunteers since the last Board meeting. www.atanet.org American Translators Association 5 2018

Call for Nominations: ATA Directors The 2018 Nominating and Leadership Development Committee is pleased to announce the call for nominations from ATA’s membership to ll three directors’ positions (each a three-year term). Elections will be held at the Annual Meeting of Voting Members on Thursday, October 25, 2018, in New Orleans, Louisiana.

nder ATA’s Bylaws, all Active elections.php). Nominations should be and the fact that a nomination does not members of ATA are eligible to run submitted as early as possible so that the guarantee a formal invitation to run for U for elected of ce. Active members Nominating and Leadership Development of ce. If a nomination is not put forward are those who have passed an ATA Committee can fully consider proposed by the Nominating and Leadership certi cation exam or who are established candidates. The deadline is March 1, Development Committee to ATA’s Board of as having achieved professional status 2018. Submit the form at the elections Directors, an individual may still petition through Active Membership Review (see page referenced above, or email, mail, or to be added to the slate of candidates by the box below for more information on fax the completed form to: submitting the nomination in writing this process). Active members must be along with the signatures of at least 60 citizens or permanent residents of the David C. Rumsey voting members endorsing the nomination. U.S. Other member categories are not Chair, ATA Nominating and Leadership The petitions must be received by the eligible to serve as of cers or directors. Development Committee Nominating and Leadership Development However, any member may submit a American Translators Association Committee no later than 30 calendar days after rst publication by the Board of nomination. Members of the Nominating 225 Reinekers Lane, Suite 590 Directors of the names of the candidates and Leadership Development Committee Alexandria, VA 22314 USA proposed by the committee. are not eligible to run for elected of ce. Fax: +1-703-683-6122 E-mail: [email protected] All ATA of cers and directors serve on a volunteer basis: please do not 2018 NOMINATING FORM ONLINE If you plan to put names forward for nominate colleagues who express serious Members may make a nomination using nomination, please contact the potential concerns about service or who have the relevant forms online (www.atanet.org/ nominees rst, explaining your intention conicting priorities.

Become an ATA Voting Member! Apply for Active Membership Review Who is eligible to become a Voting member? ATA Associate members who can demonstrate that they are professionally engaged in translation, interpreting, or closely related elds may be eligible for Voting membership. The quali cation process, called Active Membership Review, is free and online! Why should I become a Voting member? Voting membership opens doors to your participation in the Association—take part in ATA elections, volunteer for Division and Committee roles, and increase your professional networking possibilities. Check it out at www.atanet.org/membership/memb_review_online.php.

6 The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018 www.atanet.org IN MEMORIAM

Stephanie Tramdack Cash Lee Chadeayne The following contains excerpts that appeared in the December 20 ee Chadeayne, 83, a freelance translator and editor, former edition of the Cape May County Herald (http://bit.ly/Cash-tribute). university professor, and business owner, died in Boston on LMarch 25, 2017. Lee had been a member of ATA since 1970. tephanie Tramdack Cash, 66, of Cape May Court House, An ATA-certi ed translator (German<>English, French>English), New Jersey, died December 14, 2017. he served as editor of The ATA Chronicle in 1993. S Stephanie began her professional career as a nancial Born in White Plains, New York, December 22, 1933, Lee analyst with Delaware Investment Advisers in Philadelphia. was the son of Leander F. and Marie E. (Jessen) Chadeayne. She worked as a program manager with the Scherman He earned a BS in German from Columbia University in 1959 Foundation and as a portfolio manager with Scudder, Stevens and an MA in foreign languages from Ohio State University in & Clark, both in New York. She then moved to Montreal, 1966. He was a professor of German and French at Ohio State Canada, where she worked as a portfolio manager with Bolton University, Boston University, and Northeastern University. Tremblay, Inc., and then as an institutional portfolio strategist After his retirement from teaching, he founded Wordnet, Inc. for McNeil, Mantha Inc. and Lévesque, Beaubien, and in 1975. Lee was a charter member of the American Literary Geoffrion. She was certi ed as a Chartered Financial Analyst. Translators Association (ALTA), where he was the editor of Since 2004, Stephanie worked as a freelance French>English ALTA News (2006–2008). In recent years, Lee worked as a translator of nancial, energy, and maritime documents for freelance editor and translator for Amazon Publishing. His international clients. translation credits for Amazon include The Hangman’s Daughter Stephanie’s contributions to ATA were numerous. She served and The Dark Monk, both by Oliver Pötzsch. In addition to his translation work for Amazon, Lee was a copyeditor for the as chair of ATA’s Business Practices Education Committee American Arthritis Society newsletter. and as co-moderator of ATA’s Business Practices Listserve. His daughter, Marie E. Chafe, shared the following story She also helped develop The ATA Guide to a Translation concerning the photo above. “While we were on vacation, Services Agreement. As a member of ATA’s Public Relations we stepped into a bookstore and found one of his translated Committee, she worked on its Writers Group, contributing books (The Dark Monk) on the shelves. It was the rst time articles to trade publications to educate the general public and we came across one of his works—and far from home, too. business community about who translators and interpreters He was delighted!” are and what they do. She also helped develop ATA’s Client Outreach Kit. She led the “Stretch, Breathe, and Move” session at ATA Annual Conferences for many years. She was also an active member of ATA’s French Language Division and the Delaware Valley Translators Association. www.atanet.org American Translators Association 7 OUTREACH REPORT CONTRIBUTIONS BY ANDIE HO, MARIA PULCINI, DAVID RUMSEY, AND KAREN TKACZYK Stepping Out on Capitol Hill: ATA’s First Advocacy Day in Washington, DC ATA recently sponsored a Translation and Interpreting Advocacy Day in conjunction with the Joint National Committee for Languages and the National Council for Languages and International Studies.

TA’s 58th Annual Conference in Washington, DC was an A opportunity too good to pass up! It was the right time and place for ATA’s rst Translation and Interpreting (T&I) Advocacy Day. On October 25, nearly 50 translators and interpreters participated in a morning advocacy training workshop before traveling to Capitol Hill, where they met with staffers in 68 Congressional of ces. Why advocate? Above all else, advocacy is about educating Congress on issues and policies affecting the T&I industry. But even more important is proposing a solution. Explaining the problem is not enough. Advocacy Day participants focused on three T&I issues during their Congressional of ce meetings, summarized in the Statements on Advocacy Issues and Recommendations for Action (links to the statements are provided at http://bit.ly/ATA-Advocacy-Day): 1. Inaccuracies in Prevailing Wages Rate Determinations for Translators and Interpreters 2. Machine Translation versus Human Translation 3. Language Services Procurement: The MARIA PULCINI (MANAGING POLICY also to put the spotlight on the industry Need for the Best Value Approach ANALYST AT JNCL-NCLIS) side of our work. We understood that participants would T&I Advocacy Day 2017 was hosted The JNCL-NCLIS was pleased to help plan come from a variety of backgrounds and by ATA in partnership with the Joint and execute ATA’s rst T&I Advocacy National Committee for Languages Day. We hold an annual conference, experience in the language industry, so (JNCL). JNCL, along with the National Language Advocacy Day, in February we worked closely with ATA leadership Council for Languages and International each year, where representatives from the to choose issues that attendees would feel Studies (NCLIS), lobbies Congress and language professions—both education and comfortable discussing in their meetings the Executive Branch on behalf of the industry—meet with their Congressional with representatives. We also developed language community. delegations to voice priorities and issues solid brie ng materials for a Congressional So, what was it like to have the concerning the language enterprise. Since audience based on the Statements on opportunity to meet with their ATA’s Annual Conference was being held Advocacy Issues and Recommendations Congressional representatives and be a in Washington, DC, we saw this as an for Action mentioned earlier. The focus voice for our industry? The organizers opportunity not only to maintain our of the materials, as well as the overall and participants share their thoughts on presence as a collective voice and resource messaging of the event, was improving Advocacy Day below. for Capitol Hill on all things language, but working conditions for the language

8 The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018 www.atanet.org industry, particularly in relation to how speci c recommendations that they the industry works with the federal could take action on. We settled on the Can’t make it to government. We realized that many of the issues of 1) how the Bureau of Labor of ces we would be visiting might not be Statistics is calculating our average wages, Capitol Hill? Here are aware of how vital the language industry 2) the model the government uses for a few tips on how to is to economic growth, national security, creating some of its language services approach representatives and social justice. Having representatives contracts that focuses on cheapest price from the industry workforce present to tell versus quality, and 3) encouraging the at the local level. this story was an added bene t because government to preemptively create There are many ways to get involved in it placed a constituent voice behind this guidelines around the use of machine advocacy locally! powerful message. translation within the government. In the coming months, JNCL will ■ Get to know the staffers at your local How did ATA members respond to be working with Congress to act on the event? Judging by the number of representatives’ of ces. the recommendations that were made members signing up to participate, ■ Make excuses to visit your during the meetings. We look forward to we think it was very well received. We continued advocacy endeavors with ATA representatives from time to time and quickly met the maximum number of to help elevate working and contracting email regular updates on issues you registrants. We’re hoping that this will not conditions for the language industry. care about from the state or district only inspire attendees to maintain contact (breaking news, bills in Congress with the of cials they met, but perhaps that concern your topic, etc.). The DAVID RUMSEY inspire other members to reach out to (ATA PAST PRESIDENT) their representatives. important thing is to keep T&I on their Why did ATA decide to do an radar screens! Advocacy Day? First, it was a question Nearly 50 translators and ■ Hold meetings with district of ces to of convenience. It would have been an discuss both local and national issues incredible missed opportunity not to interpreters traveled to Capitol related to T&I. take advantage of having ATA’s Annual Hill, where they met with staffers Conference in DC without reaching out All of this starts with having a clear to public of cials regarding translation in 68 Congressional offices. vision of policy priorities for the eld, as and interpreting. There had been several well as a cohesive strategy to achieve them. government-related issues over the past two years where ATA spoke out on behalf of the T&I industry, including the ANDIE HO (TEXAS) When I attended my third meeting with Special Visa Program for Iraqi and Afghan Why did you want to do this? I love my representative, alone, I stuck to the interpreters, the situation for interpreters learning new things and decided that information provided in the Statements on working in immigration courts, and use of by attending the Advocacy Day training Advocacy Issues and Recommendations machine translation by local governments. provided prior to traveling to Capitol for Action that were given in our training Why turn to JNCL-NCLIS? Hill, I could not only aid our industry, JNCL- session. I rehearsed the material in my NCLIS is the key lobbying organization but learn a useful life skill. The training head (in the bathroom!) beforehand and for the language industry, and ATA is a provided us an opportunity to prepare made the words my own. member. They have organized lobbying before our meetings by learning about events with Congress in the past that the federal issues that impact language Do you feel empowered by this kind included the American Council on the services professionals, the challenges and of advocacy? Absolutely. Visiting Capitol Teaching of Foreign Languages, Modern opportunities for growth of the profession, Hill and meeting with staffers expanded Language Association, as well as ATA, and and best practices for advocacy. All I had my horizons, both personally and which stressed the commercial bene t to do was arrive at the conference a little professionally. The experience took me to the country of support for foreign earlier than usual. outside my comfort zone, but being able to communicate con dently face-to-face language education in the nation’s schools. Did you go off script? I attended two of with my representatives is a useful skill, JNCL-NCLIS had extensive experience in my three meetings (those with my senators’ not only to champion our profession, but organizing these types of events. of ces) with a colleague who is an interpreter, to advocate for my personal beliefs as well. Why did we pick the topics we did? and she had anecdotes that starkly illustrated We wanted to nd topics that would what can happen if translation and What are your thoughts about the be relevant to both translators and interpreting are treated like commodities. effectiveness of advocacy? Advocacy in interpreters and others at ATA. We also Her experiences went above and beyond this form—that is, constituents contacting wanted to nd topics where we could our prepared speeches and really made the their representatives individually— provide members of Congress with very staffers sit up and take notice. requires large numbers to make a splash. www.atanet.org American Translators Association 9 OUTREACH REPORT continued

Many people, including members of expect and information on navigating Andie Ho is a French>English Congress, don’t even know our industry Capitol Hill. (There are tunnels—who translator with more than 20 exists, and we’re not as ashy an industry knew?) After the fact, I can also say years of experience translating as some others. So, we have a lot of that having these preparation materials for the food industry. She is an alumna of Kent State’s work to do to 1) inform clients that also meant we neophyte lobbyists had we’re a formal, professional industry, graduate translation program something solid on which to base our and began her career as a project manager 2) educate our representatives about discussions—and a fallback when we issues concerning our profession, and before moving into translation full-time. were nervous. 3) compete with endless other groups to Her background includes a bachelor’s degree make our voices heard. Advocacy Day was How were you received by staff? The in French, a minor in mathematics, a a great start, but if more of our colleagues receptions varied from dry to warm and performance at Carnegie Hall, and a stint at did the same, it would boost our signal friendly. We had been warned in the a criminal forensics laboratory–all of which that much more. training to expect a range of responses in uenced her translation work today. Contact: [email protected]. What happened that you didn’t expect? and to avoid using any keywords that The staffers were extremely courteous and might trigger partisan hackles. (For Maria Pulcini is managing professional. It wasn’t that I expected them example, it’s probably best not to mention policy analyst at the Joint to be rude, but politics is so fraught these the Affordable Care Act in my Freedom National Committee for days that perhaps I was prepared for the Caucus Representative’s ofce!) Languages-National Council for worst. But without fail, everyone we met Languages and International Did you feel you made a difference? greeted us warmly, offered us beverages Studies (JNCL-NCLIS). In Yes. None of the three staffers we met (always Dr. Pepper, the state soft drink addition to managing the JNCL-NCLIS ofce of Texas!), and listened attentively to appeared to know anything much about and membership, she is responsible for external what we had to say. They took notes and language issues and how our industry communications and liaises with Congressional asked questions. It helped that we weren’t works. A few seemed to think that ofces to execute policy priorities. Prior to discussing hot button issues. using machine translation was not a joining JNCL-NCLIS, she was living in Rome, wise option for anything that mattered, Italy, working in various capacities for her so that led to some light humor. I felt undergraduate university, the American The focus of the materials, as that we had raised awareness of how University of Rome, where she completed her well as the overall messaging of our industry operates with many self- undergraduate degree in international relations employed small business owners. One with a minor in Italian studies. Contact: the event, was improving working of the staffers in particular seemed [email protected]. conditions for the language especially intrigued by the ideas we shared with him from the Statements on David Rumsey is the immediate past president of ATA. A long- Advocacy Issues and Recommendations industry, particularly in relation time veteran of the language to how the industry works with for Action and appeared to be convinced industry since 1990, he has been that they had value. a project manager, localization the federal government. Did you follow up in some way? engineer, and a freelance If so, how? The three Coloradoans in translator and editor focusing on Scandinavian my group visited both senators together and German technical documentation. Contact: and then split up to meet two of our [email protected]. KAREN TKACZYK (COLORADO) representatives. We emailed those four Karen Tkaczyk is the Why did you want to do this? Advocacy staffers after the fact. Two responded secretary of ATA. She works as Day was an opportunity to receive immediately, and one had already a French>English freelance training on something completely new forwarded the material and our names to translator. Her translation work and to stretch myself outside my comfort a committee that he thought was the best is highly specialized, being zone by visiting Capitol Hill. place to get more information or further entirely focused on chemistry What did you think about the issue our efforts. He encouraged us to contact and its industrial applications. She has an MChem statements and recommendations them directly. in chemistry with French from the University of prepared by JNCL-NCLIS? The Manchester, as a well as a diploma in French and position statements impressed me when Will you continue lobbying at a local a PhD in organic chemistry from the University I received them, and I tried to absorb level? Yes, I hope to. I would not feel of Cambridge. She worked in the pharmaceutical the material as I prepared for the day. intimidated to arrange a meeting with industry in Europe. After relocating to the U.S. As well as the statement printouts we my representatives’ ofces now. This in 1999, she worked in pharmaceuticals and were to hand off to staffers, we received was a wonderful experience that I am cosmetics. She established her translation practice several pages of helpful tips on what to thankful for. in 2005. Contact: [email protected].

10 The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018 www.atanet.org FEATURE BY JOHN M. MILAN

Before delving any further into modern economic theory, though, it’s important to mention what this has to do with the language services industry. The astute freelancer may realize that these concepts can be readily applied to our reality. How are our services valued? What is their marginal utility? Are we offering something that has value in use, value in exchange, or perhaps both? This article explores these concepts to provide a framework aimed at helping language services professionals understand the market better, where they stand in it, and what they can do to improve their current position. To answer the titular question regarding rates, we rst need to establish a few premises. For starters, our analysis will be limited to the translation market, although this same analysis could easily be applied to the interpreting market. More speci cally, we shall examine the situation of professional freelance translators currently working in this market, who understandably would like to earn more, but don’t have a lot of options to improve their income. In general, they can: 1) work more hours, 2) increase their output of words per hour, or 3) increase the money they earn per word. For now, let’s assume Why Can’t I Raise My Rates? that said freelancers are already working as many hours as possible and producing An Introduction to the Economics as many words per hour as they can. That leaves one option: raising their rates. of Language Services Is that even possible? If so, how? And what are the constraints? To answer Freelancers often feel constrained when setting their rates. these questions, we need to de ne a few economic concepts, starting with value. Why can’t they charge more? Value, scarcity, competitive markets, Value: Value, in our case, comes from and limits on differentiation offer some insight into this issue. offering a service that someone wants and is both willing and able to pay for. There Note: In compliance with U.S. antitrust law, to live, he wrote, yet its scarcity seems to are many language pairs out there that no speci c rate recommendations are made lend it value. On the other hand, everyone aren’t commercially “valuable” because in this article. This text is based on an ATA needs water to survive, but its relative there isn’t enough demand or enough webinar presented in May 2017. abundance makes it cheap. consumers willing and able to pay for As such, Smith concluded, there them. For instance, Navajo>Hungarian is or millennia, humans have struggled must be more than one type of value. He a language pair unlikely to offer a feasible with the concept of value. Why differentiated between value in use and career path. English>Spanish, on the other are some things more valuable F value in exchange. Water is very useful, hand, is a different story. than others? Who decides? Why, Plato pondered, are rare things so valuable, but it won’t buy you much, whereas Scarcity: Scarcity of translators refers when others, like water, are not? diamonds are relatively useless, but in to the number of quali ed professionals Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, exchange, they buy quite a bit. Thus, who can provide the service offered in his seminal work, Wealth of Nations, value in exchange must depend on both in a valuable language combination. formalized this thought exercise, which scarcity and a concept that has come to be And scarcity on the market will tend to has come to be known as the diamond- known as marginal utility, which shall be vary with the barriers to entry for new water paradox. No one needs a diamond discussed in more detail later. translators. These “barriers” may include

www.atanet.org American Translators Association 11 WHY CAN’T I RAISE MY RATES? continued the skills needed to be a professional Anyone who wants our services supply, prices rise. Why? To answer that translator or the experience required to question, we need to examine the market translate in a speci c eld. The upshot is also going to face a budget supply of translations in more detail. is that the more scarcity there is in a constraint, which means they There are lots of variables that determine “valuable market,” the greater the relative supply. First, as already stated, is the existing value of those scarce professionals. have a certain amount of money price on the market, which is sometimes Marginal Utility: Likewise, we need to referred to as the going rate. As the going they’re “willing and able” to rate rises or falls, supply will change have a basic understanding of marginal accordingly. The next variable is the labor utility, which in our case refers to the spend on our services. required to offer it. In our case, this means relative usefulness of a service being the number of translators on the market offered. For instance, if there aren’t and how much, on average, they get paid any quali ed translators available in a place on them? What are their budget for their services. We also have to take into language pair, then the rst translator to constraints? And can any other competing account available technology, taxes, and offer these services is going to have very services (for instance, machine translation) subsidies, plus the prices of related services, high marginal utility. In other words, be used instead? All these variables will such as machine translation. Clearly, this she will be “valuable.” But as more and have an impact on nal market rates. analysis is not simple. But isolating these more translators begin offering that same factors is the rst step to being able to language pair, the less valuable each of explain the market’s machinations. their individual services will be to the THE INTERPLAY OF On the demand side, we also start with market as it becomes saturated. This leads SUPPLY AND DEMAND the going rate. Then we look at variables to a more general concept in economics Both supply and demand are subject to such as consumer budgets, the price of called the law of diminishing marginal economic “laws.” When discussing these complements and substitutes, consumer utility. In short, the more of a given service laws, economists employ a Latin term, tastes and preferences, the total number of there is on offer, the less valuable one ceteris paribus, generally translated as consumers out there for a given language more “unit” of that service is going to be. “all else being equal.” In other words, pair, and expectations about current Supply and Demand: Our market, to simplify our analysis, we start by and future pricing, as well as advertising like any other, consists of supply and examining just supply or demand, without and marketing. As each of these factors any other variables coming into play. demand. Normally, we think of ourselves change, the demand itself for translation The law of supply is fairly simple. As as consumers, on the demand side, while services will change in response. businesses provide the supply. But to the market price increases for a service, suppliers, or in our case, translators, will understand the language services market, COMPETITIVE MARKETS we need to ip this model so that we, as offer more of their services because they Of course, not all markets are the same. language professionals, are the supply. We can make more money doing so. Hence, They range from what economists call supply words, and our supply is limited there is a direct relationship. Price goes a monopoly—where one provider or by both our productivity and time. up, supply goes up—ceteris paribus. translator completely dominates the On the other side, demand comes from The law of demand is the opposite. market—to pure competition, where there those who need translation services, such As the market price increases, consumers will demand fewer services because more are so many translators and buyers of their as agencies, businesses, the government, expensive services eat up more of their services that no individual has any market hospitals, or even individuals. The budget. This is an indirect relationship, power over any other. As you are probably important thing on the demand side is which depends upon both marginal utility aware, most markets fall somewhere in to bear in mind that anyone who wants and budget constraints. Price goes up, between these two extremes. our services is also going to face a budget demand goes down—ceteris paribus. The language services market, for most constraint, which means they have a The interaction of supply and demand language pairs, is one in which there certain amount of money they are “willing results in a market. Conicting forces are lots of translators on the supply side and able” to spend on our services. push one another toward equilibrium. and lots of consumers on the demand Consumer Perception: Consumer The rub is that they won’t ever achieve it. side. Hence, our market is relatively perception is another factor affecting Prices are always changing. Equilibrium competitive. What is the implication? market rates, which, for language services, is a moving target. But it’s these forces of People sometimes (erroneously) means how businesses, agencies, or the supply and demand that help determine talk about language services as being government view them. When consumers prices, or, in our case, the rates available commodities. That is, a situation where perceive value, they are more willing for language pairs. everyone is offering the same thing. But to pay for it, which raises a series of Why are supply and demand always for an economist, commodities have questions for our market. Do buyers of shifting? Scarcity tends to be the key. In a speci c de nition: a commodity is a language services understand the services general, when supply exceeds demand, standard, interchangeable product. It’s being offered? What value do they prices fall. And when demand exceeds a good, like corn or gold, where there

12 The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018 www.atanet.org is no differentiation. Commodities are absolutely identical. Thus, from an economic standpoint, it’s pretty clear that language services are not commodities. Why? Because they can be differentiated. And differentiation, it turns out, is a freelancer’s best friend.

DIFFERENTIATION Differentiation is one of the key aspects of a competitive market with seemingly similar products or services, which must meet minimum requirements. But translations, as we all know, are all different. And when these differences add value for the consumer, they provide an avenue for language professionals to affect their price. As language professionals, we need to ask ourselves what makes our services different. I have proposed a pyramid of differentiation to help us understand this concept better. (See Figure 1 at right.) At the bottom of the pyramid are the basic requirements to work in our eld: knowledge of two or more languages. Everybody needs this skill to work as a translator. Moving up higher, Figure 1: Language Professional Differentiation Pyramid in terms of differentiation, one may have a degree in a language or a specialization in certain elds, such as legal, medical, even if quality isn’t commensurate. And differentiate one translation from another, technical, or nance. Differentiating even technology, in general, is constantly a professional association is one way in further, we move up a step higher to adding changing expectations and cost structures. which, together, we can educate the public speci c skills, like desktop publishing or While this analysis may sound and ensure that our consumers value us expertise in computer-assisted translation disheartening, it should not be misconstrued more like diamonds and less like water. tools, or experience in another country or as hopeless. We do have a range of possible another eld. And nally, at the top, is a prices in every commercial language John M. Milan is the treasurer of question mark, regarding what ultimately pair, which tends to vary with quality, ATA. An ATA-certi ed translator differentiates one quali ed language experience, skills, reliability, etc. (Portuguese>English), professional from one another. Only that So, what, speci cally, can an individual economist, writer, and individual can make that determination. freelancer do? The short answer is: lecturer, he has over 20 years differentiate, differentiate, differentiate. of experience in language SO, WHAT CAN ONE DO? By de nition, differentiation is going to services. He has an MS in microeconomics from Having introduced the economics be different for everyone. The important Ohio State University, where he was a Foreign concepts above, we can now take a stab at thing for individual freelancers is to Language and Area Studies fellow, concomitantly answering our initial question: Why can’t determine how their services add value specializing in Portuguese translation during his graduate studies. He also has degrees in I raise my rates? to their customers. By differentiating international political economy and Spanish from The answer comes in multiple parts. from the competition, they create the Indiana University and studied abroad in Madrid, First, language services are offered on opportunity to charge more. Spain, as an undergraduate. He has been involved A few of the ways differentiation can relatively competitive markets, where in the Carolina Association of Translators and succeed is through improved quality, individuals have limited economic power. Interpreters, an ATA chapter, for over 10 years, Our services are dif cult to differentiate. expertise, consistency, productivity, serving on its board of directors for eight years Consumers may not be capable of valuing business development, and unity. Unity, and as president from 2013–2016. From 1996 to a good translation over a bad one. in this case, refers to individuals joining 2005, he was based in São Paulo, Brazil, lecturing Scarcity of quali ed translators varies forces through professional associations, as an adjunct professor of economics at a local considerably among language pairs. such as ATA. Since each of us, on our university, while also working as a freelance The cost of “alternative services,” like own, has relatively limited power to help translator and consultant. Contact: machine translation, is low and attractive, the industry understand quality and [email protected]. www.atanet.org American Translators Association 13 FEATURE BY MARTIN CROSS

are being translated for another purpose. But even when something lands in your inbox with no context, there may be clues pointing to its potential use as evidence that a good detective can spot. The rst is the le format. It’s exceedingly rare for legal evidence to be in the form of an editable text le, such as Microsoft Word, HTML, or a le formatted for use by a computer-assisted translation tool. Documents for court submission are overwhelmingly in PDF format. This characteristic is particularly telling in the case of documents that you would otherwise expect to receive in editable format. Scanned journal and newspaper articles, PDF copies of emails and letters, screengrabs of websites, hardcopies of nancial reports, and printed advertising are all more likely to be used to prove what happened in the past than to serve some new purpose in the future. Another giveaway is the document’s age. If you’re asked to work on medical records, contracts, or expense reports that date back several years, ask yourself why they are being translated now. For an evidentiary translator, Evidentiary Translation for U.S. Courts the document is the witness. The evidentiary translator should observe like a detective, be faithful like a court interpreter, and decide like a judge. Once you’ve done your preliminary detective work, it makes sense to con rm any translators make evidentiary like a detective, be faithful like a court your suspicions with the client. While translation their specialization, interpreter, and decide like a judge. agencies don’t always know how the Mbut others reading this article translations they broker will be used, will be freelancers whose translations SPOTTING DOCUMENTS THAT if you think it’s likely that a document is being used for evidence, try asking are used in the courts without their MAY BE USED AS EVIDENCE knowledge because their agency clients the agency if the client is a law rm. Our rst job as a detective is spotting don’t tell them. In both cases, the end Even when dealing with direct clients, a those documents that may be used as user will evaluate the work based on common answer to questions about these evidence. This is easy if you see that each sorts of documents is that they “just want its suitability as legal evidence. Beyond page is stamped with “Con dential— customer satisfaction, if your translations to know what it says.” While that may be Attorney’s Eyes Only” or bears a Bates true for the moment, there’s good reason are going to be used in the justice system, number (a page identi er that starts with you naturally want them to be well to take a longer view. Now is the time to a trial name or letter code followed by a step into your role as a judge. suited to the administration of justice. long serial number), which is used as a This is no minor consideration. To method of indexing legal documents for produce a translation that’s suitable for easy identi cation and retrieval.1 (See PREPARING EVIDENTIARY use as evidence, we must take a speci c Figure 1 on page 15 for an example.) TRANSLATIONS approach that differs greatly from best There are also some documents that It’s routine for people to review translation practice in other elds. are evidentiary by nature, such as birth documents, including translations, well Fortunately, there are some role certi cates, diplomas, and licences. before deciding whether to begin civil models we can turn to for guidance. The Published patents also fall into this class, litigation. Once the wheels of justice start evidentiary translator should observe unless you’re speci cally told that they turning, however, they will invariably

14 The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018 www.atanet.org submit the documents they reviewed for information, including any translations, as evidence. A tiny subset of super-smart attorneys will go back to the translator at this point and ask if there are any changes that need to be made before it’s submitted to the court. Most, however, will just le it, either as-is or with a certi cation provided by the agency. To be on the safe side, if you decide that the translation is likely to be used as a basis for legal determinations at any point, you’ll serve your client best by preparing it as an evidentiary translation. An evidentiary translation is defendable by one feature above all: delity. In the elds of literature, advertising copywriting, company reports, and user manuals, good translations are adapted to the reader with the goal of producing the same reading experience that a reader Figure 1: Example of Bates number on document of the source text would have had. In this context, best practice calls for us technical discourse. Interpreters are to add information that was not found to be more faithful to what the author tasked with remaining unobtrusive so that in the source text. If you’re not sure, meant than to the speci c words they the fact nders can concentrate on the imagine yourself in court with a diagram used. For example, a translation of a user witness rather than the interpreters.”3 showing the source text sentence and, manual might say “two feet” back from For an evidentiary translator, the below that, your translation, with arrows the screen, rather than “a half a meter.” A document is the witness. It’s easy to drawn to show how the various parts of localizer might replace the phrase “a cup understand that a court interpreter your translated sentence all came from of coffee” with “a glass of tea,” depending should not x the errors or smooth out corresponding places in the source. The on the country. But you can imagine the the rough patches in what a witness says. arrows might not be straight since, for problems these translations would cause Equally clearly, they should not add extra example, a verb at the end of the source if they were presented as evidence in information to make it easier for the jury to text might appear at the beginning of the a product liability lawsuit or a trial for understand, or recast what is said to match translated sentence. In many diagrams murder by poisoning. the culture of court. These principles apply there would be some arrows going Follow the Court Interpreter’s Code: equally well to written translation. between individual words and others This is where we turn to the role model Maintain One-to-One Correspondence between entire phrases. And some arrows of the court interpreter. The Code Between the Source and Target: A might go from one word in the source to of Conduct for Court Interpreters in translation that’s faithful to the approach a four-word phrase in the target, or the Washington State Courts, for example, followed by court interpreters is generally other way around. What matters is that tells interpreters to interpret “thoroughly referred to as a “literal translation,” which the arrows in your imaginary diagram and precisely, adding or omitting can be de ned as: an exact and accurate account for everything. If you can’t do nothing, and stating as nearly as possible reproduction of the entire content of the source this, or if you’re not sure that the judge what has been stated in the language text without embellishment or modi cation. would accept the explanation you give for of the speaker, giving consideration to Working with the goal of literal translation one of the arrows, rework your translation variations in grammar and syntax for both doesn’t mean that word-for-word calques until you feel con dent. languages involved.”2 It reminds us that are acceptable. A reasonable set of rules Check Everything—Small Details it’s not appropriate to interject “personal would be to reproduce the meaning, Matter: Before submitting your faithful moods or attitudes.” Similarly, the U.S. respect sentence breaks, use consistent and exact translation, it’s important Federal Court Interpreter Orientation vocabulary and phrasing, and maintain to read it through again, but this time Manual states: “The principal aim of one-to-one correspondence between the returning to the role of the detective. interpreters is to give as exact a rendition source and target. Speci cally, imagine the detective on TV as possible, using direct speech. This is The rst four rules are self-explanatory, who notices the details that everyone true whether the language is nonsensical, but there are many ways to approach else misses. Think of the scene in which fragmented and contradictory; or whether one-to-one correspondence. The key the cops are gathered around the corpse, it is erudite, philosophical, and highly idea is not to leave anything out and not taking pictures and looking for clues, www.atanet.org American Translators Association 15 EVIDENTIARY TRANSLATION FOR U.S. COURTS continued

months later asking for certi cation, it’s reasonable to decline or suggest that you rst perform a separately billed review of your own work. In the U.S, there’s no single agreed- upon format for certifying translations. Statements can range from a simple, “I certify that this translation is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge and belief,” to multi-page declarations prepared by lawyers listing all your quali cations and employing words like “solemn” and “perjury.” It’s up to you to decide if the statement is reasonable and true. For example, unless you happen to be infallible, it’s best not to certify that a translation is accurate without including qualifying language that mentions “knowledge and belief.” If you don’t like the way the statement is worded, have it rewritten or don’t sign it. It’s your statement, and that makes you the judge.

BE PREPARED, BE CONFIDENT By following the examples of detectives, judges, and court interpreters, you’ll be con dent in providing a translation that’s suited to its purpose and reects well on both you and your client. If you decide that the translation header at the top, we may have left out the proof that the entire case could have NOTES is likely to be used as a rested upon. Handwritten annotations, 1 For more information on Bates basis for legal determinations stamps, and even page numbers can all numbering in PDF documents, constitute vital evidence. We must never http://bit.ly/Bates-Adobe-PDF. be so consumed by the corpse in the at any point, you’ll serve your 2 Code of Conduct for Court Interpreters middle of the oor that we let the details in Washington State Courts, client best by preparing it as an slip by unnoticed. http://bit.ly/Washington-Code. evidentiary translation. 3 U.S. Federal Court Interpreter Orientation WHAT IF YOU’RE ASKED Manual, http://bit.ly/Federal-Court-Manual. TO CERTIFY THE TRANSLATION? After exercising your newfound detective but our detective is off in a corner eying skills you may be asked to certify your Martin Cross began his a discarded gum wrapper, or over by the translation. It might also happen that career as an in-house editor of door staring at a pair of neatly lined-up you deliver your translation without a Japanese patent translations in shoes. Sometimes it’s the little details that certi cation and are asked to sign one at a Tokyo more than 30 years ago. tell the most important story. later date. In both cases, you will be back He lived in Italy and France If we struggle diligently to nd the best to playing the role of the judge in deciding for many years, where he way to accurately reproduce the colloquial what, if any, certi cation is appropriate. translated from Italian and French into English. jargon in the minutes from a meeting but While it’s common for translators to He has served as an expert witness on translation rush over the list of attendees at the end, certify that their translations are faithful, in patent litigation on multiple occasions. we may nd we’ve missed the only piece unless you have agreed otherwise in Currently, he is president of Patent Translations of information our client cared about. advance, there’s no obligation for you Inc., where he continues to translate and edit Likewise, no matter how precisely we to do so. For example, if an agency translations and train translators and editors translate complex legal provisions in a asks for a “quick and dirty” same-day about the ins and outs of patent translation. letter of intent, if we fail to include the fax translation and then comes back six Contact: [email protected].

16 The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018 www.atanet.org FEATURE BY CAROLYN YOHN

able to de ne the speci c purpose of the text in one short sentence, no exceptions. For instance, the article you’re reading now aims to explain how to de ne an author’s style in terms of copyediting decisions to improve the quality of your translation services. If the goal of the source text isn’t obvious, consult your client immediately— you may have bigger editing issues than simple misplaced commas. Next, de ne your audience. Will chief executive of cers or lawyers read the nal text on their computers, or will parents read it aloud to their children from print copies? Education level, age, and ability should absolutely change your word choice, sentence length, and argument structure. (This is why well-educated American presidential candidates have regularly drafted their speeches to the public at a 6th-grade level since the 1940s.3)

To copy an author’s unique style, you first need to understand what decisions had to be made in the initial draft that resulted in the Copyediting for Stand-Out Style copy you’re rewriting. in Any Translation “Style”—what a vague term! But don’t despair. Just answer a few simple STEP 2: DEFINING questions at the start of every project to de ne your copyediting goals and CLIENT PREFERENCES provide consistent, quality work every time. Now, read through your source text one more time and write down any patterns 4 tyle is the sum of all your drafting in your head—write your choices down. you see. How does the author play with decisions, from choosing whether The act of putting pen to paper allows you sentence length? Are there lists, section to be playful or serious or whether to make the decisions just once, and you’ll headings, or other structural features? Is S 2 to use semicolons versus full stops. You be more consistent in applying them later. the text humorous or serious; formal or don’t often have to make most of these (As a bonus, save your answers for future casual? What word choice and punctuation decisions from scratch when translating— projects. Your clients will be thrilled with preferences stand out or stray from the norm? I use a two-column table to organize instead, you’re recording what the original your “long memory”!) my answers. (See Table 1 on page 18.) author preferred. But to copy an author’s If time is limited (and it often is), you unique style, you rst need to understand STEP 1: GETTING can always print a blank table to ll in what decisions had to be made in the BROAD-STROKE GUIDELINES as you begin to translate or revise. Take initial draft that resulted in the copy First, make sure you understand the goal notes as you dig into your substantive 1 you’re rewriting. of the text. Read the source through once, work. By the time you’re about halfway The following are proactive steps you can then ask yourself: Is the author trying to through the project, you’ll have a take to organize your observations about convince someone to buy a new nancial complete style sheet without having eaten a text in order to apply them consistently product? Explain a safe at-home soap- into your deadline too much. to your translation. As you work through making technique? Describe the location Both the advance prep method and these steps, don’t just answer the questions of a prime stargazing site? You should be the ad hoc method provide the same www.atanet.org American Translators Association 17 COPYEDITING FOR STAND-OUT STYLE IN ANY TRANSLATION continued

Table 1: Sample Table for Organizing Client Preferences regarding these more nuanced text features truly demonstrate your value as a Spelling Use American standards (color, humor, gray) translator or reviser. Punctuation Client prefers to omit extra “s” in plurals with “s” plus apostrophe French sentences, for example, often (the IRS’ decision, not the IRS’s decision) go on for dozens of lines longer than English readers like. However, the Word Choice Use “undocumented” rather than “illegal” to describe immigrants. length of the “wordy” French sentence Numbers Round up to nearest dollar ($498.95 -> $499) often has a rhetorical purpose; enter the strategic use of semicolons. They are a Hyphenation/Compound Words Healthcare = single word, decision-making = hyphenated tidy compromise between the author’s Acceptable Foreign Words Don’t translate person’s title (use Mme. Pernaud, not Mrs. Pernaud) desire to use longer sentences and the target language’s need for pauses to allow Unacceptable Words Client dislikes nationality “English” – use “British” instead. readers to process information. Or consider this. In Hungarian, Formatting (Lists, Section headers are boldface, subheads are italicized instructions are often given in the Abbreviations, etc.) present tense, rst-person plural (e.g., Other Shorter sentences, lots of puns, don’t use bullet points “First we open ap A, then we attach part B”). The author doesn’t really care Table 2: Examples of Into-English Translation Issues what verb tense is used to provide directions. The goal is to provide Source Issue: Common Error: Revise To: instructions in the culturally accepted French run-on sentences Keeping target same length Use semicolons at natural standard format for the target audience. breaking points. In an English translation, then, we Hungarian instructions state Literal translation Use command form for verbs. can switch to command form without “We do this, then we do that” straying from the original style intent (e.g., “Open ap A, then attach part B”). French use of the ellipsis… Keeping the ellipsis… Full stop or switch to “etc.” Education level, age, and ability should absolutely change your Make sure you understand Cultural references are an obvious word choice, sentence length, example. Even Americans who have the goal of the text. never watched a baseball game in their and argument structure. life use phrases like “She hit a real home run with that idea” or “Just give me a ballpark gure.” Baseball is often not a key result: a solid basis for consistency from theme to the documents that use these These copyediting issues are far easier the rst paragraph of the text to the last, expressions. Just how literal should you to track over time, rather than with each and from your rst project with your be in your translation, then? Look at the project. Reading the examples here probably client to the next. If you choose the latter goal of the text and the target audience made you think of recurrent issues in your method, just remember to go back to description you wrote down in Step 1 to own language pair—if so, write them down the beginning and re-edit the parts you decide how to handle idioms. (A note of now! You can use a table here as well to looked at before your style sheet was caution: you may want to discuss your organize the style preferences of your target complete. You have to apply your style decision with your client. Despite my language. Table 2 at left contains a few into- rules consistently to the whole text for attempts to dissuade him, a news website English translation examples. your efforts to show.5 owner insisted that I translate idioms literally, every time, as a “window into the FINAL THOUGHTS STEP 3: IDENTIFYING source culture.” The resulting expressions A bit of organization at the beginning of ADDITIONAL NEEDS often sounded odd in English, but the a project can save you a lot of time and De ning the source author’s style is not client was happy!) energy during the review stage of your the end of constructing the copyediting Idioms aren’t the only text feature that translation project, and customizing roadmap for translation. Authors often changes drastically between source and your review to each client’s preferences make the decisions you notice in Steps 1 target. What about the strategic use of will certainly increase the quality of your and 2 consciously, but few actively mull the passive voice? Gender and pronouns? language services. Remember, the goal of over the more subtle aspects of language Grammar and punctuation choices? The any translation is to successfully convey that translators should. decisions you make (or at least suggest) an author’s information and personality

18 The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018 www.atanet.org NEW CERTIFIED MEMBERS Defining the source author’s Congratulations! style is not the end of The following people have successfully passed ATA’s certi cation exam: constructing the copyediting English into Chinese Sarah L. Puchner roadmap for translation. Lenny Yang Elm Grove, WI Woodhaven, NY Julien Rosso English into Japanese Milwaukee, WI to a foreign audience. Whether you use Rika McKenna the tools suggested here or create your Mead, WA German into English own, invest some of your project time Matt Baird Hajime Sato in de ning style decisions clearly. Your Niederkassel, Germany clients will thank you! Tustin, CA Kristina Cosumano NOTES English into Russian Hofstetten, Germany 1 For even more detail than can be Alexander Tinnikov included here on the concept of style, Dunmore, PA Laura E. Freeburn Burlington, WI try The Sense of Style, by Steven Pinker Olga Vidrenko (Pengiun Group, 2014), East Windsor, NJ Eva Weissman http://bit.ly/Sense-of-Style. New York, NY 2 Levitin, Daniel J. The Organized English into Spanish Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Diana Arbiser Japanese into English Information Overload (Penguin Group, Boise, ID 2014), starting at 67, Hajime Sato http://bit.ly/Organized-Mind-Levitin. Eric Ayala Tustin, CA 3 Thompson, Derek. “Presidential Speeches North Chester eld, VA Portuguese into English Were Once College-Level Rhetoric— Mariana Bension-Larkin Linda A. Burns Now They’re for Sixth-Graders,” Los Angeles, CA The Atlantic (October 14, 2014), Sunnyside, NY http://bit.ly/presidential-speeches. Anna Martorell Fuste Elias Shakkour 4 Studio City, CA For a particularly good discussion Chicago, IL of writing patterns that contribute to Marissa Aguayo Gavilano balance, rhythm, and suspense, read Rochdale, United Kingdom Spanish into English Building Great Sentences, by Brooks Landon (Plume, 2013), Eliana Rey Laura Bailey http://bit.ly/Great-Sentences-Landon. Seattle, WA Atlanta, GA 5 The goal of all editing is to ensure a Susana Sherman Melissa M. González Monroe Township, NJ text is “correct, concise, clear, and Austin, TX consistent.” Stainton, Elsie Myers. The Fine Art of Copyediting, Second Edition French into English Jessica Hartstein (Columbia University Press, 2002), Christopher Allen Houston, TX http://bit.ly/Copyediting-Stainton. Indianapolis, IN Rachel Thorson Hernandez Felicity Bézard Arlington, VA Carolyn Yohn is a professionally Santa Clara, CA trained copyeditor who provides Omkar S. Kalaskar Christine Clay revision services to law rms, Washington, DC Seattle, WA education consultants, and Cynthia Yordán Ramírez nonpro t organizations. Arwen Dewey She translates French and Seattle, WI Toa Baja, PR Hungarian legal and academic texts into American Natalie B. Higgins Emily Safrin English under the name Untangled Translations. Sterling, IL Portland, OR She was of cially approved (agréée) by the Consulate General of France in San Francisco for Ben Karl Claire Ziamandanis translation in 2015. She is the Sacramento-area Reno, NV Chestertown, NY ambassador for the Northern California Translators Association, an ATA chapter. Contact: [email protected]. www.atanet.org American Translators Association 19 FEATURE BY MOLLY YURICK

Marybeth Timmermann posing with advanced Spanish students (including her son Matt, next to her in a black shirt) and the result of their hands-on translation activity at Greenville High School in Greenville, Illinois. Pro le of ATA 2016–2017 School Outreach Contest Winner: Marybeth Timmermann This year’s ATA School Outreach Contest winner impressed her audience with real-life localization examples!

arybeth Timmermann, an In March 2017 she gave her rst School who had chosen to study Spanish as ATA-certi ed French>English Outreach presentation about translation to an elective. Since studying languages M translator, is the winner of the her son’s Spanish class at Greenville High is considered impractical in her small 2016–2017 School Outreach Contest. School. “I just called his teacher and asked town, she wanted to challenge that way She won a free registration to ATA’s 58th if I could present,” Marybeth says. “He was of thinking before the students went off Annual Conference in Washington, DC very excited to have me.” to college. “I wanted to show them that for an all-smiles photo taken during her “Greenville is a small town and we you don’t just have to be a teacher if you presentation at Greenville High School in don’t have much contact with people study language. You can do translation or Greenville, Illinois, where she spoke to who speak foreign languages,” Marybeth interpreting too.” students in the school’s advanced Spanish explains when asked about her Marybeth did a lot of research before class about translation. motivations for giving a presentation. starting to prepare her outreach material. “I “Other languages just aren’t a part of read through all the presentations that are our lives, so I wanted to stress the idea available on the School Outreach website RAISING AWARENESS ABOUT that translating is something people and listened to one of ATA’s free webinars TRANSLATION IN SMALL-TOWN ILLINOIS do, not just something that phones and about the program.” She found that none Marybeth had been reading about the Google Translate do.” of the presentations available online quite School Outreach Program and contest in Marybeth decided to speak to the t what she wanted to do, so she decided The ATA Chronicle for many years and had school’s advanced class because they to create her presentation from scratch. She always been interested in participating. were juniors and seniors in high school then spent a lot of time researching Spanish

20 The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018 www.atanet.org translation examples she could include in Marybeth also spent time talking about her talk. “I don’t speak Spanish, so that was the role of technology in translation, a real challenge.” including computer-assisted translation When Marybeth started her tools and machine translation. She presentation by speaking French, it wrapped up by discussing how came as a big surprise for the students. translation is a growing profession by “This is a small town and I know all the including statistics from the U.S. Bureau kids. To them, I’m just Matt’s mom,” she of Labor Statistics. She concluded by says. “They were so shocked to hear me explaining what the students could do speaking French.” to become a translator or interpreter and Having gotten the presentation off to mentioned ATA as a great resource for a great start with this attention-grabber, aspiring linguists. Marybeth moved on to the basics. Topics included the differences between THE WINNING PHOTO translation and interpreting, common The winning photo of this year’s School specializations, and places where you can Outreach Contest is of Marybeth and work (e.g., freelance and the private and the students posing with the result of a public sectors). translation activity. She gave the students Her next step was to explain that an index card and asked them to write translation is more than word-for-word down an example translation that showed substitution by providing a few simple one of these: examples from the Spanish translations ■■ she had collected during her research. Differences in number of words One of the examples she used pointed out ■■ Structural differences in the language that although three words are used to say ■■ False friends “I am ne” in English, only two words are needed to say the same thing in Spanish ■■ Idioms/metaphors (estoy bien). Marybeth then explained ■■ Cultural differences (used in how false friends can lead to serious advertisements, for example) misunderstandings and got a laugh from The students wrote down their answers students by pointing out that embarazada and then posed with their index cards in Spanish means “pregnant” in English, after nishing the activity. “We had so not its false friend “embarrassed.” much fun,” Marybeth says. She then moved on to more complex examples using metaphors and idioms from the Dominican Republic, where the A LIFE-LONG ADVENTURE class teacher is originally from. Her nal WITH THE FRENCH LANGUAGE example came from a real-life translation Marybeth also grew up in a small town her son pointed out to her earlier in the in Illinois with limited exposure to year. They were at a McDonald’s where foreign languages and cultures, but there was an advertisement for breakfast immediately fell in love with French sandwiches playing on a screen in both when she started studying it in high English and Spanish. In the English school. When attending Illinois version, the ad ended with text across the Wesleyan University in Bloomington, screen that said “More Breakfast, More Illinois, Marybeth decided to double Amazing,” while the Spanish version major in mathematics and French. Math ended with Más y más y más rico (or was the “smart” choice—something that “More and more and more delicious”). would get her a good-paying job after Her son was surprised to see that the college—and French was the major she ad used all the same images, but the really loved. She spent her junior year phrases at the end didn’t say the same studying in Nantes, France, and quickly thing. Marybeth used this example in realized she wanted to go back one class and the teacher helped explain why day. She returned to Illinois to nish a literal translation of the English version her degree and then returned to France wouldn’t sound appealing to a Spanish- immediately after graduation to work for speaking audience. a year as an au pair in Rouen. www.atanet.org American Translators Association 21 PROFILE OF ATA 2016–2017 SCHOOL OUTREACH CONTEST WINNER: MARYBETH TIMMERMANN continued

WORKING ON THE BEAUVOIR SERIES GETTING INVOLVED IN THE Need Some Tips for After nishing her master’s degree in SCHOOL OUTREACH EFFORT 1996, Marybeth joined ATA, passed the Marybeth says she was thrilled to Your School Outreach French>English certi cation exam, and have received free registration to ATA’s Presentation? started working as a part-time freelance Annual Conference for winning the translator. She has been working mainly No problem! Just visit ATA’s online School School Outreach Contest, since initially as a contributing translator and editor for Outreach Resource Center. Our goal is she had not planned on attending. The Beauvoir Series, edited by Margaret to give you quick, convenient access Although Marybeth is currently A. Simons and Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir to material you can use in making working as a part-time translator, she and published by the University of Illinois presentations about the translation and says that “going to the conference this Press, ever since. Simone de Beauvoir was interpreting professions. The material year was a big step to start moving into a French writer and feminist, most widely is organized by grade level. Each level full-time translation.” known for her essay “The Second Sex.” includes What to Say, How to Say It, Extra Now it’s your turn to join the efforts The collaborative project has consisted Credit, and Presentations. of ATA’s School Outreach Program! The of translating six volumes of Beauvoir’s ■ Tips on speaking to elementary 2017–2018 School Outreach Contest collected works, including two volumes school students is now open and the winner will of diaries and four volumes containing ■ Tips on speaking to middle receive free registration to ATA’s 59th her philosophical, political, literary, and school students Annual Conference in New Orleans, feminist writings. Three more volumes are Louisiana, from October 24–27, 2018. ■ Tips on speaking to high school students forthcoming in the series. Marybeth says The deadline for submissions is July 18, ■ Tips on speaking to college/ the most challenging part of working on graduate students 2018. The winner will be contacted no this project has been editing. “There have later than August 20, 2018. (Please note Just go to www.atanet.org/ata_school/ been up to eight translators working on that you must be a member of ATA or school_outreach_contest.php and click on one volume. My job is to review and edit an ATA-affiliated organization to enter.) Resource Materials. the translations to prepare the volumes for For more information, visit publication. We check it with the source and www.atanet.org/ata_school/school_ try to keep the style and voice consistent outreach_contest.php. It was during a social situation in France throughout all the volumes,” she explains. that she had what she calls her “aha” moment—when she decided she wanted I wanted to show students that to work as a translator. “I was in a group Tell Us Your Story! social situation where there was a man you don’t just have to be a If you visit schools to speak to students who only spoke French and many others teacher if you study language. about translation and interpreting, we who only spoke English.” Marybeth says would love to hear from you—whether that when an English speaker told a joke or not you decide to submit a photo to that made everyone laugh, the French man the contest. E-mail School Outreach was totally lost and afraid the group was Coordinator Meghan McCallum at making fun of him. “And all the English Working part-time on this project has [email protected] with speakers looked to me, the only bilingual been great for Marybeth’s lifestyle. Of a description of when and where you person, to clarify the situation so he would her four children, two are in college, one presented and let us know about your know we weren’t making fun of him. is in high school, and she is currently memorable experience. When I bridged the gap was the moment I homeschooling her youngest. “I’m able to knew I wanted to work in translation.” teach my fth-grader French at home,” When Marybeth got back from her year she says. “I wouldn’t have this opportunity Molly Yurick is a working in France, she dove head rst in the public schools here.” Spanish>English translator Marybeth also taught translation at into a master’s degree at the University specialized in the tourism, the University of Illinois at Urbana- of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. At the hospitality, and airline time, her university didn’t offer a master’s Champaign from 2004–2009. “I helped industries. She has worked as a in translation, so she studied second the university develop their rst online medical interpreter in Minnesota language acquisition and took as many translation class before their Center for and as a cultural ambassador for the Ministry electives and independent studies in Translation Studies existed,” she says. of Education in Spain. She has a BA in Spanish translation as she could. She also worked “I learned a lot while teaching. When I and global studies and a certi cate in medical with a professor there doing research on graded students’ translations, it helped me interpreting from the University of Minnesota. translation. “I was his assistant and helped as a translator. I was always improving my She is currently living in northern Spain. Contact: him analyze his research.” own skills, even while teaching.” [email protected].

22 The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018 www.atanet.org 2017 ATA Honors and Awards Recipients

ALEXANDER GODE MEDAL National Institute of Criminal Sciences Georganne Weller and the Mexican judiciary. The American Translators Association is Over the course of her career, honored to recognize Georganne Weller as Georganne has championed the the recipient of the 2017 Alexander Gode preservation of Mexico’s indigenous Medal. ATA’s most prestigious award is languages. As the director of linguistic named for one of ATA’s founders and its policies at the Mexican National rst president, and is presented to an Institute for Indigenous Languages individual or institution in recognition of from 2006–2009, she promoted outstanding service to the translating and professionalization, training, and the interpreting professions. certi cation of interpreters in these Georganne has been a conference languages—work she continues to this and legal interpreter (Spanish/ day. She is also a founding member of Portuguese>English), educator, author, Mexico’s Civil Association for Public researcher (sociolinguistics and Service and Community Interpreters and Past ATA President David Rumsey presents Translators. “Indigenous languages are Amerindian linguistics), and staunch Georganne Weller with the Alexander Gode Medal advocate for the translating and part of the intangible heritage of Mexico, interpreting professions for more than 30 instrumental in the development of the intangible heritage of the country,” years. She has worked as a certi ed federal numerous training programs, including she says. “They carry history, customs, court interpreter, a contract interpreter the design of a master’s degree program traditions—everything.” for the U.S. Department of State, and a in interpreting and translation at the Georganne’s accomplishments have had a tremendous impact on the translating and conference interpreter for the Canadian Universidad Anáhuac in Mexico. She has interpreting professions. ATA is honored to government. She has interpreted for also lectured and published extensively have her as a Gode Medal recipient. international organizations such as the in the elds of sociolinguistics, language Organization of American States and the politics, bilingualism, and indigenous The Alexander Gode Medal is named for ATA’s United Nations Educational, Scienti c and languages at regional, national, and founder and guiding spirit, who was the rst Cultural Organization (UNESCO). She is international levels. As a legal interpreter, recipient. The medalists represent a record of a member of the International Association she has created a professional network achievement in a variety of venues, including of Conference Interpreters. linking interpreters of foreign, indigenous, not only translators and interpreters, but Through her interests in translator and sign languages to organizations and lexicographers, theorists, association leaders, and and interpreter education, she has been government authorities, such as the institutions. This award may be given annually. www.atanet.org American Translators Association 23 2017 ATA HONORS AND AWARDS RECIPIENTS continued

UNGAR GERMAN on the research practices of Ampère and TRANSLATION AWARD Faraday, reconstructed from previously unknown archival material, Exploratory Alex Levine Experiments considers both the historic Alex Levine is the recipient and epistemological basis of exploratory of the Ungar German experimentation and its importance to Translation Award for his translation scienti c development. from German into English of Exploratory Friedrich Steinle is a professor of Experiments: Ampère, Faraday, and the Origins the history of science at the Technical of Electrodynamics, by Freidrich Steinle (The University of Berlin and president of the University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016). German Society for History of Science, The 19th century was a formative Medicine, and Technology. period for electromagnetism and Alex Levine is a professor of philosophy electrodynamics. Hans Christian at the University of South Florida. His Ørsted’s groundbreaking discovery earliest years were spent in the U.S., of the interaction between electricity Germany, and Poland. Fully bilingual and magnetism in 1820 inspired a in English and German, he has a PhD wave of research, led to the science of in philosophy from the University electrodynamics, and resulted in the of California, San Diego. His rst development of electromagnetic theory. academic position was at the University In response, André-Marie Ampère of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, followed and Michael Faraday developed two by 10 years at Lehigh University in competing theories. Although their Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He joined Left: Past ATA President Marian S. Green eld approaches and conceptual frameworks the Department of Philosophy at the presents Judith Lyons and Mary Lou Bradley with were fundamentally different, together University of South Florida in 2005. the Marian S. Green eld Financial Translation their work launched a technological He is coauthor of From Man to Ape and Presentation Award revolution that laid the foundation for Darwinistas! He has published translations our modern scienti c understanding from German, French, and Spanish, technology (or Fintech) is a rapidly of electricity. including Paul Hoyningen-Huene’s growing disruptive force in the nancial In this foundational study, Friedrich Reconstructing Scienti c Revolutions and sector. New technology, like blockchain Steinle compares the work of Ampère Formal Logic: A Philosophical Approach. (the protocol underlying Bitcoin and and Faraday to reveal the prominent He is the editor of Perspectives on Science other cryptocurrencies), is expected to role of exploratory experimentation in (Massachusetts Institute of Technology create long-term systemic changes to the development of science. Focusing Press), a journal publishing contributions the global nancial system. Keeping to scienti c studies that integrate abreast of developments in Fintech historical, philosophical, and sociological and its potential impact on nancial perspectives. products and services, payment delivery and settlement processes, The Ungar German Translation Award may be nancial regulation, reporting and bestowed biennially in odd-numbered years for a compliance, etc., will be important for distinguished literary translation from German into nancial translators, who will need to English that has been published in the U.S. understand how Fintech is affecting the nancial sector. The presentation provided attendees with a broad overview of some existing and potential MARIAN S. GREENFIELD FINANCIAL use cases for Fintech, including an TRANSLATION PRESENTATION AWARD introduction to Fintech terminology. Judith Lyons and Mary Lou Bradley Judith has been a freelance (ATA-certi ed: Judith Lyons and Mary Lou Bradley French>English) translator since 2002, are the recipients of the 2017 Marian specializing in nancial and legal texts. S. Green eld Financial Translation Her clients include multinational banks, Presentation Award. investment companies, legal rms, and Judith and Mary Lou presented various direct and agency clients. Prior to one advanced session (Financial translation, she worked for many years Technology—Fintech) at this year’s in commercial and retail banking in the Annual Conference in Washington, U.S. and France and in the nancial units DC. They discussed how nancial of multinational corporations. She has

24 The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018 www.atanet.org a bachelor’s degree in languages and a S. EDMUND BERGER PRIZE FOR translation certi cate from Georgetown EXCELLENCE IN SCIENTIFIC AND University, as well as a master’s degree in French from New York University. TECHNICAL TRANSLATION Mary Lou is a nancial translator Bruce D. Popp (ATA-certi ed: French>English) with Bruce D. Popp is the recipient of the S. seven years of experience. She has been Edmund Berger Prize for Excellence in a freelance translator for the past three Scienti c and Technical Translation. Bruce years. She has 17 years of commercial won for his translation from French into banking experience, during which she English of The Three-Body Problem and the spent 10 years focusing on the electric Equations of Dynamics, by Henri Poincaré power generation sector. She has an MS in (Springer, 2017). translation from New York University. She Jules Henri Poincaré wrote Sur le lived in Paris and Milan from 1997–2014, problème des trois corps et les équations and now shares her time between western de dynamique in 1890 for professional Massachusetts and Paris. mathematicians and astronomers Marian S. Green eld is a past president interested in celestial mechanics and differential equations. Poincaré started (meaning that there is no friction, heating, of ATA (2005–2007) and the New York or other dissipation of energy). Without Circle of Translators. Currently, she is the work on this monograph to answer a question about the stability of the solar trying to solve the differential equations, president of the American Foundation for system. He sought to prove whether the he studied properties of the solutions Translation and Interpretation. She has positions and velocities of planets in with theorems (e.g., recurrence theorem) worked in the translation industry for the solar system could be represented and geometrical representation (e.g., state over 30 years. A translator in New York’s mathematically (as time-series expansions) space and Poincaré maps). The methods Financial District for 20 years, she is the for all time. He proved the state of he developed are the foundations for former manager of translation services at the mathematical theory of dynamical the solar system cannot be predicted JP Morgan. systems, popularly called Chaos Theory. arbitrarily far in the future. While the importance of this work has In his approach to the problem in this The Marian S. Green eld Financial Translation been widely understood, the fact that the monograph, Poincaré took a very general Presentation Award is offered by the ATA and original work was written in French has approach to understanding solutions the American Foundation for Translation and meant that the full scope and brilliance Interpretation to recognize an outstanding to the equations of dynamics (Newton’s of what Henri Poincaré did has been presenter of a nancial translation session during laws of motion expressed as differential inaccessible to contemporary English- ATA’s Annual Conference. equations) for deterministic systems speaking readers. Bruce’s translation of Bruce D. Popp The Three-Body Problem and the Equations of Dynamics provides readers access to Poincaré’s seminal monograph, recognized as a classic in the study of dynamical systems. Bruce is an ATA-certi ed French>English translator with a BA in physics from Cornell University and a PhD in astrophysics from Harvard University. He is also a U.S. Patent and Trademark Of ce registered patent agent. As a professional translator, he performs translations of scienti c and technical documents, especially patent applications. As an independent scholar, he applies his love of astrophysics, mathematics, and French to understanding the work of Henri Poincaré.

The S. Edmund Berger Prize for Excellence in Scienti c and Technical Translation is offered by the ATA and the American Foundation for Translation and Interpretation to recognize Left: Past ATA President David Rumsey presents Bruce Popp with the S. Edmund Berger Prize for excellence in scienti c and technical translation by Excellence in Scienti c and Technical Translation an ATA member. The award may be given annually. www.atanet.org American Translators Association 25 2017 ATA HONORS AND AWARDS RECIPIENTS continued

2018 Honors and STUDENT TRANSLATION AWARD Delaney Swink Awards Now Open! Delaney Swink is the recipient of the ATA and the American Foundation for Translation Student Translation Award for her and Interpretation (AFTI) present annual translation project from Spanish into and biennial awards to encourage, reward, English of Maldito Paraíso (Damned and publicize outstanding work done by both Paradise), by feminist Chilean poet seasoned professionals and students. Awards and Rosa Alcayaga. Delaney recently scholarships for 2018 include: earned her BA in international studies and Romance languages from the ■ The Alexander Gode Medal, ATA’s most University of Oregon Robert D. Clark prestigious award, is presented to an Honors College. individual or institution for outstanding Rosa Alcayaga’s work combines service to the translating and interpreting literary and colloquial Spanish, and its professions. This award may be given cultural allusions range from Biblical- annually. Nominations are solicited from era patriarchs and resistant women past recipients of the Gode Medal and the heroes to Latin American history membership at large. and current social-political issues, Past ATA President David Rumsey ■ including gender violence. “Alcayaga The Alicia Gordon Award for Word Artistry presents Delaney Swink with the Student incorporates Chilean linguistic features, in Translation is given for a translation Translation Award (from French or Spanish into English, or including contemporary slang, that from English into French or Spanish) in any pose challenges for translation and push subject that demonstrates the highest level me to develop my poetic abilities and cultural knowledge while staying true of creativity in solving a particularly knotty to the character of the original text,” translation problem. Open to ATA members in Delaney says. good standing. The project began in the winter of ■ The S. Edmund Berger Prize is offered by 2017 at the University of Oregon, when AFTI to recognize excellence in scienti c and Delaney enrolled in “Bodies Bilingual: technical translation by an ATA member. The Genders and Cultures in Translation,” award may be given annually. a course taught by poet and translator ■ The Harvie Jordan Scholarship is awarded to Amanda Powell, which focused on an ATA Spanish Language Division member theoretical and practical approaches to in good standing to promote, encourage, issues of gender and social justice in and support leadership and professional translation. It was in this course that she development within the division. The began translating Alcayaga. Since then, scholarship may be given annually. she has completed six of 43 poems in ■ The Lewis Galantière Award is given for a Maldito Paraiso. distinguished book-length literary translation Delaney’s project also received the from any language, except German, into Global Oregon Translation Studies English published in the United States. The Working Group Undergraduate award may be given biennially in even- Translation Award. The funding will numbered years. help her travel to Chile for three weeks the Center for Cross-Cultural Learning, ■ The Marian S. Green eld Financial Translation in January 2018, where she will meet where she studied multiculturalism and Presentation Award is offered by AFTI to and work directly with Alcayaga on the human rights. She also spent a semester project-in-progress. recognize an outstanding presenter of a at Ponti cia Universidad Católica de Delaney is currently an intern at nancial translation session during ATA’s Annual Valparaiso in Valparaíso, Chile. She wishes MAPLE Microdevelopment, a U.S.- Conference. The award may be given annually. to work in the nonpro t sector in the based international micro nancing ■ The Student Translation Award is presented area of advocacy for women and minority nonpro t organization. While at the rights domestically and abroad. to any graduate or undergraduate student, University of Oregon, she was a student or group of students, for a literary or sci-tech ambassador and served as vice president The Student Translation Award is presented to translation or translation-related project. The of the International Business and any graduate or undergraduate student, or group award may be given annually. Economics Club. She spent a semester of students, for a literary or sci-tech translation For complete entry information and deadlines, visit abroad in Rabat, Morocco, through the or translation-related project. The award may be www.atanet.org/membership/honorsandawards.php. School for International Training at given annually.

26 The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018 www.atanet.org BUSINESS PRACTICES BY NIKKI GRAHAM When the Unthinkable Happens and Giving Up Work Isn’t an Option

ometimes life throws you a curveball and the unthinkable happens: a S family member is stricken with a long-term illness and you suddenly have to take on the role of caregiver. Caring for a loved one can be physically and emotionally draining and as time- consuming as looking after a baby, but often with none of the happy milestones marking a transition from one phase to another. Being a caregiver takes large chunks out of your available work time, plus it often doesn’t put you in the frame of mind to focus when you nally do manage to sit down at your desk. Giving up work entirely is not always a nancially viable option for the family. In my case, I’ve had no choice but to cut down on my hours and learn to work smarter. Although my earnings have dropped by about 20% during the past two years that I’ve been a caregiver, I estimate that the time I spend translating, on administration tasks, and other work-related matters is 50% less. I now very rarely work in the evenings or during weekends, and I certainly don’t always work a full day either during the week. My goal is to get back to the same level of earnings without increasing the number of working hours. In the following, I would like to share a few of the ways I’ve managed to ensure that the unthinkable didn’t turn into a nancial disaster for my family. Reduce unnecessary spending. As a expenses down lessens the burden of and I’ve removed myself from several family, we went through our standing having to earn, which helps reduce the Facebook groups. orders and direct debits and were able to pressure (and stress) on you. Use a Smartphone. Now that cut down quite a few expenses. We looked Stop spending so much time on social cellphones are more like mini computers at our insurance policies and switched to media. I don’t blog/tweet/share quite than phones, they’re essential for cheaper options providing the same level as much as I used to. I don’t want to keeping in touch with clients when of coverage. Next on the chopping block give up social media altogether, as it’s a you’re out and about. Despite my efforts was our cable television package. We also way of staying in touch and staving off to cut down on the emails I receive, a took advantage of good deals at Christmas isolation when you’re mostly tied to the considerable number still pour into my and changed our cell phone plans. We try home. But not being online so much is inbox daily. Using my phone to sort to shop smarter in general by not going de nitely a good way of nding time you through them means I’ll have more crazy in the supermarket, checking prices, thought you didn’t have to work more. I time for work when I get to my desk. and making better choices. Bringing your now rarely comment on LinkedIn forums And despite what I said above about

“Business Practices” will alternate in this space with “The Entrepreneurial Linguist.” This column is not intended to constitute legal, nancial, or other business advice. Each individual or company should make its own independent business decisions and consult its own legal, nancial, or other advisors as appropriate. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of ATA or its Board of Directors. www.atanet.org American Translators Association 27 BUSINESS PRACTICES continued social media, having Twitter, LinkedIn, or putting myself in a pressurized situation and others’ translations when I need a Facebook, and WordPress (for my blog) when home life is stressful enough. much longer uninterrupted period to on my phone helps me stay in touch Inform your client when things go concentrate properly. with friends, colleagues, and keep wrong. If you nd that you cannot Have a shorter to-do list. I got the abreast of translation news. make the deadline, you need to tell idea of a three-item to do-list from Get a computer-assisted translation your client as soon as possible. I’ve Elisabeth Hippe-Heisler’s Translation (CAT) tool. I used the same CAT tool been working with some of my clients and Minimalist blog.1 Just trying to for ages, but it became really slow once for well over a decade and I told them achieve three things per day rather than I updated to the latest Windows and about my situation when circumstances writing a long list of tasks that I would Microsoft Of ce software, so I recently beyond my control ate into my buffer nd impossible to achieve is far more switched to memoQ. Unfortunately, this and I knew it was impossible to calming and satisfying when I manage means I’ll have to spend time I really complete the assignment on time. to tick them off. don’t have learning how to use this CAT Obviously, not everyone is going to Build a support network. Combining properly, but I’m hoping future time gains be so understanding, which is why it’s caregiving with earning a living can will more than compensate. Another important to let your clients know as make it difficult to meet up with friends reason for changing my CAT is that I soon as possible. and colleagues, as social and translation want to try Slate Desktop (again, in the events often clash with caring duties or hope that it will enable me to work more Being a caregiver takes large work. I’m always grateful when a family ef ciently), which doesn’t work with my member or friend offers to help because old tool. Recent results with memoQ have chunks out of your available work I need breaks to recharge my batteries. been promising so far. time, plus it often doesn’t put As freelancers, it’s especially important Dictate your translations. I’ve been to take advantage of any opportunities using Dragon NaturallySpeaking (DNS) you in the frame of mind to focus to stave off isolation. If I can’t get out to see people, I can always invite them to for a while and it really does speed up when you finally do manage to sit visit me instead. the translation process once you get over that initial hurdle of feeling awkward down at your desk. Look after yourself. This is probably saying everything aloud. DNS used in the tip I’m worst at, but I’ve been putting combination with Wordfast and the in more of an effort recently. I dress in new Of ce software constantly made clothes that make me feel good about myself and always wear some jewelry and everything crash. I’ve not experienced Work for the right clients. I’m not perfume. I’m also trying to spend more any of these annoying problems with actively seeking any direct clients at the time exercising, relaxing, and eating more memoQ so far. moment as I know I don’t have time to take healthily. I won’t be any good to anyone if Choose your translation/revision jobs care of all their requirements. I also steer I get sick and am unable to look after my wisely. clear of agencies with tight turnarounds, This is easy to say, and I don’t family or do any work. always get my analysis stage right. When strict deadlines, and a tendency to dock you have limited time available to work your pay if you deliver late. and you need to maximize your earnings, NOTES Maximize concentration when 1 Translation and Minimalist blog, you have to assess job offers carefully and working. I often listen to music http://hippe-heisler.blogspot.com. reject any that might pose complications especially put together to improve brain (e.g., formatting, terminology, dif culty power when I need to free my mind and level, clunky style, etc.), or you could knuckle down. I’m currently paying for Nikki Graham is a proof-editor miss your deadline. Focus@Will, although you’ll nd lots of and Spanish>English translator Don’t get too booked up. Caregiving can playlists to aid concentration on Spotify and reviser specializing in be unpredictable and sometimes eats up for free. leisure, tourism, hospitality, journal articles, education, and substantial amounts of the time you were Learn to work in smaller chunks. I’ve localization. She is a quali ed planning to allocate to work. If you leave always preferred to translate for long member of the Institute of Translation and some room in your schedule, you can stretches at a time and felt it wasn’t Interpreting (MITI), having passed the ITI exam in catch up later. Being particular about the worthwhile to settle down to work unless the subject of leisure and tourism. She is also a jobs you accept and rejecting anything I had at least an hour available. Now member of Mediterranean Editors and Translators, with a tight deadline might mean you end I’m having to change that mindset to an association of language professionals up saying “no” far more often than you make use of any chunk of time, even 15 who work mainly into or with English. You used to. Some days I reject everything I’m minutes, just to power on and get things can nd her blog, My Words for a Change, at offered and then have no work at all, but done. This works for translating, but https://nikkigrahamtranix.com/blog. Contact: this is preferable to letting a client down is no good for revising/editing my own [email protected].

28 The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018 www.atanet.org INTERPRETERS FORUM BY MAHA EL-METWALLY Microwavable Notebooks and Other Contraptions s a conference interpreter and ■■ Once the pages you scanned have LIVESCRIBE 3 SMARTPEN university instructor, I’m always reached their destination, you’ll be able www.livescribe.com/en-us/smartpen/ls3 Aon the lookout for technological to share, print, or archive the les. The Livescribe 3 Smartpen has a developments that can bene t the transcription feature that was unavailable in interpreting profession. This includes What if you run out of pages? The big advantage here is that the paper is older versions. This pen is also paired with devices that will allow the user to transfer an app, the Livescribe+, which transfers reusable. When the Rocketbook Wave is handwritten notes and illustrations into a notes into a digital format instantly. This full, simply place it in the microwave (yes, digital format. is an improvement from older versions of What’s the signi cance of such you read that right!) with a mug of water on Livescribe, where you had to connect the technology for me? In my professional top of it and microwave it until the logo on pen to your computer to transfer notes. life, I prepare assignments, teach, the cover turns white. The pages are now The pages in the Livescribe notebooks attend professional development events, wiped clean and can be reused up to ve feature an innovative dot pattern that tells and write articles for professional times. If you have the Rocketbook Everlast, the smartpen precisely what you’ve written publications. Over the years I’ve amassed you can simply wipe the page with a moist or drawn. Livescribe paper is available at a considerable amount of information towel and reuse it endlessly. (The folks at competitive prices in a variety of sizes and that is scattered in digital and analog Rocketbook even provide instructions and styles, and can even be printed for free from formats. It’s quite frustrating to know the developer’s website with a laser printer. that I have a useful tidbit somewhere a video detailing how you can erase pages but can’t nd it. It would be much easier safely: http://bit.ly/erasing-pages.) to nd what I’m looking for if my notes EQUIL SMARTPEN were accessible in digital format. Here is NEO N2 SMARTPEN www.myequil.com/home If you still prefer regular paper and your some information on a few products that www.neosmartpen.com/en will help create a digitalized archive for ink tips of choice, you could try the Equil While Rocketbook doesn’t go as far as your notes. Smartpen. It works on any paper using allowing you to edit your notes, the Neo your preferred ink tip. This is because N2 Smartpen does. It’s a combination ROCKETBOOK WAVE NOTEBOOK the pen comes with a Bluetooth sensor of a smartpen, special notebook, and an that you can attach to any notebook. This http://bit.ly/RocketbookWave app (Neo Notes) that runs on both iOS connects the pen to the app: the Equil For many of us, the combination of pen and Android. When the pen and app are Note. Again, this pen can be used without and paper is still the ideal way to take paired, everything you jot down in the a smartphone or tablet because its sensor notes. The Rocketbook Wave Notebook notebook is transferred live to the app. is capable of storing up to 10,000 pages provides the freedom of a traditional pen The transcription function allows you to that can be transferred to a digital format and paper notebook while allowing the when you connect to the app. user to transfer notes into a digital format. turn your notes into editable text. You The notebook is available in two sizes may be disappointed with this function In the eld of technology, there is and comes with a Pilot FriXion pen. Each if your handwriting is messy. But if it’s always something new to explore. page in the Rocketbook features a Quick legible, you can proceed to edit your Granted, what works for someone may Response barcode and seven symbols that notes. You can control the ink color and not work for someone else, but it’s always can be used to link to cloud destinations thickness (only on screen, as the pen exciting to explore new gadgets. like Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, or will always write in the same ink color your inbox. Here’s how it works: on paper) and highlight important text. Maha El-Metwally is a conference interpreter for ■■ You can share your notes in different Download the Rocketbook app to Arabic, Dutch, English, and your smartphone. formats through a variety of apps. The French. She works for a ■■ Using the Pilot FriXion pen, write or pen allows you up to 14 hours of writing wide range of international draw whatever you like. time on one charge. It’s energy ef cient organizations, including the because it turns itself on when you start European institutions and the United Nations. ■■ When you’re done, open the app writing and switches off when you stop. She also teaches conference interpreting at the and point the phone at the page. It If your phone or tablet run out of battery University of Surrey. In addition to ATA, she is automatically takes a picture of the a member of the International Association of power, the N2 Smartpen can store your notes, which can then be transferred Conference Interpreters and the Chartered Institute immediately as jpegs or PDFs to notes until you can reconnect to the app. of Linguists. She also serves on the board of the whichever digital destination you If you have a laser printer, you can Institute of Translation and Interpreting. She has indicated by marking the appropriate print the special paper for free at an MA in interpreter training from the University of symbol on the page. www.neosmartpen.com/en/ncode-pdf. Geneva. Contact: [email protected]. www.atanet.org American Translators Association 29 OUR WORLD OF WORDS: SPOTLIGHT ON T&I PROFESSIONALS BY TONY BECKWITH Interview with Abdelha d Missouri, Arabic Interpreter y guest today is Abdelha d their languages. As a Moroccan, I started Missouri, a U.S. citizen who was learning formal Arabic in rst grade, Mborn in Morocco. He has been French in third grade, and, as I mentioned an Arabic<>English conference interpreter earlier, English in tenth grade. with the U.S. Department of State since 2010. What prompted you to study translation? One of his most high-pro le Was it a popular eld of study at that assignments was in May 2017, when he time and place? Did you specialize in any accompanied President Donald Trump’s particular kind of translation? team to the summit between the U.S. and By ninth grade I was good at French the Cooperation Council for the Arab and started wondering why the English States of the Gulf (GCC) in Riyadh, the I would soon be learning in tenth grade capital of Saudi Arabia. Abdelha d was uses the same alphabet, and even more also on the White House interpreting team or less the same sounds, but is a different at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in 2014. language. This curiosity made me think He has interpreted for various American about the structural and semantic secretaries and undersecretaries, and has similarities and differences between languages. So, in 1992, I decided to apply worked in military settings as well. to the King Fahd School of Translation in Abdelha d studied at the King Fahd Tangier, Morocco. I passed the exams and School of Translation in Tangier, Morocco, was admitted. in 1993. In 1994, he earned a BA in As to whether translation was a popular English language and literature from Sidi eld of study at that time, I can say that it Mohamed Ben Abdellah University in Fes, was seen as a way to attain a good position the central Moroccan city often referred Where and how did you learn English? Did and status. After all, Morocco is only to as the country’s cultural capital. He you speak English at home? What other about 10 miles from Spain. Translation then earned an MA in foreign language has always been a promising eld in languages do you speak? teaching at L’Ecole Normale Superieure North Africa, but the King Fahd School of I began studying English in the in Rabat, Morocco, in 1997. He moved Translation in Tangier is the only well- tenth grade in 1987. My teacher, a Peace to the U.S. and settled in Philadelphia in established school in the country. Corps volunteer, told me, “You’re doing 2004. He earned a certi cate in politics As for specialization, students at the very well. You should continue to study King Fahd School are given a wide range from the Fels Institute of Government at English.” That did it. From that point of material with which to work, including the University of Pennsylvania in 2010. forward I spoke only English, even at legal terminology and reports on world Abdelha d was a professor of Arabic home. I also watched shows on the Dish affairs. The school boasts of having at the University of Pennsylvania’s Asian Network incessantly, the BBC constantly, Moroccan, Sudanese, British, and Iraqi and Middle-Eastern Studies Department and insanely sought out anyone with teachers who provide a wide range of and College of General Studies from whom I could practice my English. It perspectives and methodologies. 2004 to 2005. More recently, he was a turns out that my decision to speak professor of Arabic at Temple University English was not such a crazy one after Did the King Fahd School of Translation also (Center City Institute) in Philadelphia all. Now, all over Morocco, everyone, teach interpreting? Was their curriculum from 2005 to 2010. especially the younger generation, wants to learn English. I also speak French, based on Modern Standard Arabic? Thank you, Abdelha d, for joining us today. to which I was formally exposed in the The King Fahd School of Translation is an ideal place to learn the secrets of our Let’s start with a little background. You third grade. profession. The curriculum is taught in were born in Morocco? How did you become interested in languages? Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), so there I was born in Berkane, which is in Morocco is multicultural and multilingual are no dialects involved. While I’m sure northeastern Morocco, a 30-minute by nature. Moroccans don’t necessarily the school has made numerous changes drive from the beautiful beaches of the expect a foreigner to speak to them in to their curriculum since I was there Mediterranean Sea. But when I was ve, their native language. They accept foreign in 1992–1993, I remember that even my father moved us to his birthplace, languages so readily that they enjoy though we mainly worked on translation, Missour, the capital of the province of meeting people from other countries and we had many opportunities to practice Boulemane, about 125 miles east of Fes. are always pleased to engage others in interpreting. I remember, for example,

30 The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018 www.atanet.org that a United Nations interpreter would come from time to time to teach us about working for international organizations, which made me think of interpreting as an introduction to elite discourse and world affairs. The school offers many programs, including an MA in simultaneous interpreting.

What was your rst interpreting assignment? In the 1990s, I spent a lot of time as an amateur interpreter with Peace Corps volunteers in Missour, but my rst professional assignment was at the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After that, I worked as a contract judiciary interpreter in civil, criminal, and family divisions for the court systems of Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, and New Jersey. For me, this was an essential and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, was the site of the U.S.-GCC Summit in May 2017. (Photo: Reuters) gradual progression toward becoming a professional interpreter. Once I got World, located in the Middle East, North answer your question, there is only one a good grip on my working languages Africa, and the Gulf region. In each of these language common to all 22 Arabic- (Arabic and English), the courts countries, you’ll nd three levels of Arabic. speaking countries. An educated introduced me to a world of legal Classical Arabic, as found in the Qur’an or interpreter can interpret at regional events systems, processes, and terminology the conversation and writings of learned as long as the speakers stick to MSA. unlike anything I had ever experienced. men, is the domain of religious scholars and students. Muslims—both elites and A little more than 400 million people around What brought you to the U.S.? commoners—often quote from the Qur’an the world speak Arabic, and it’s the sixth My Peace Corps volunteer English teacher in their everyday conversations. That’s most-spoken language on the planet. How planted the promise of the American why those who lack a good command dream in my head in 1987. Having been of Classical Arabic or who are unfamiliar widely spoken is it in the U.S.? raised in a poor village, of which I’m very with the Qur’an risk committing atrocious A recent study by the Pew Research proud, I felt I needed to learn more about blunders when interpreting. Center concluded that the number of the place known as the most powerful The second level of Arabic you’ll nd Arabic speakers in the U.S. rose from country in the world, the country that in the Arab world is Fus-ha, or Modern 615,000 in 2000 to 1.1 million in 2014.1 supposedly addresses injustices, redresses Standard Arabic, which is the language Of course, Arabs are not all concentrated grievances, welcomes immigrants and of the media, whether state-owned or in one area. Just like any other immigrant refugees, and gives everyone a chance. independent. Even on social media, group, they are spread across the country. educated people post in MSA, given that But since many of them seek to better The Middle East is a large, diverse region. millions of Arabic speakers around the their economic status, they tend to settle Arabic is one of the most widely spoken world will understand it. MSA is also in major urban centers. languages, but there are other important one of the six of cial languages of the languages and dialects there as well: Farsi, United Nations. Do you interpret at events here where The third level, the colloquial version Hebrew, and so on. Arabic is an ancient Arabic is a dominant language? If so, what of the language, is the local dialect. kind of events? language and I understand that it’s fairly Every Arabic-speaking country has at similar to Hebrew, but not so close to Farsi. least one dialect. I don’t think there are events where Would a speaker of MSA be able to interpret It’s true that Arabic has much in Arabic is the dominant language requiring in most of the countries in the region? common with Hebrew and with other interpreters. There are cases where a The Middle East is indeed a very diverse languages of the region. But you have non-English-speaking person needs an region where you’ll meet Arabs, Iranians to learn Hebrew to communicate in interpreter, and emergency situations (Persians), Jews, Kurds, Turks, Armenians, Hebrew, and you have to learn Arabic to (e.g., the mobilization to repatriate people Nubians, Greeks, and Azeris. There are communicate in Arabic. These languages stranded in Lebanon as a result of the 22 Arabic-speaking countries in the Arab are not mutually comprehensible. To 2006 war). But other than these temporary www.atanet.org American Translators Association 31 OUR WORLD OF WORDS continued emergencies, I’ve worked mainly for the Professional interpreters know grandchildren, who cannot be pried courts and hospitals in Philadelphia. away from their electronic devices. There the landscape and, like tour are millions of Twitter and Facebook Arabic is written from right to left, in a guides, can maneuver across the accounts that communicate in Arabic cursive style, and its alphabet has 28 with audiences beyond their traditional letters, two more than English. What can terrain of meanings attached to geographical boundaries. Losing their followers to digital platforms, conventional you tell us about translating Arabic into words and produce an accurate English and vice versa? Are there the usual print media have turned to the internet to keep their audiences. Digital grammatical, stylistic, and syntactical replica of the landscape in communication has revolutionized the challenges that translators face in any another language. Arab world and there is no stopping it. language, or are there dif culties speci c to As to your second point, we don’t use this combination? that kind of shorthand in Arabic just yet. Translators from the Middle East and There is no abbreviation system in place. North Africa region can write in cursive to those Middle Eastern dialects on I can think of only a few abbreviations from left to right, as in English, French, television, most of them can switch easily that are used in Arabic, such as NATO, Spanish, and so on, and from right to to Egyptian or Levantine when talking to FAO, and Da’ish. This is because words in left, as in Arabic, Hebrew, Pashtu, Dari, someone from those regions. Arabic are never written in partial form. etc. This process requires the translator They simply wouldn’t mean anything if What about machine translation? Can you or interpreter to make numerous mental expressed in that way. That may partly adjustments to understand items correctly tell us what’s happening in the Middle East explain why Arabic sentences tend to and put semantic equivalents in the in the area of computational linguistics? Is be longer. In Arabic, common Western right place. For example, Arabic is very translation software as widely used there as abbreviations such as WHO, UN, NATO, derivational and in ectional, which means in the West? and EU simply don’t exist because we use that translators and interpreters have to Like every other profession, translation complete words. deal with multiple shades of meaning. has gone global. Technology has made As in some other languages, words in it easy for companies to outsource Can you tell us something about your work? Arabic agree in number and gender, and or subcontract their products. If you Do you do any interpreting or translating for the noun comes before the adjective. check any directory of translators or agencies or the court system? No less important is that Arabic relies interpreters, you’ll see that foreign I’m an independent contractor. I’m heavily on quoted speech. Arabic speakers membership represents a signicant nobody’s employee, even though I work and presenters usually draw from their portion of the subscribers. There is now mostly for the Department of State. My own cultural, historical, and religious an abundance of translators in the Middle work involves a lot of reading. One background, which can be a challenge for East. They have at their disposal modern thing that prospective, amateur, and the interpreter. translation technology such as Trados, professional interpreters should be aware Déjà Vu, and other software tools. For of is that language is but a container of Do the differences between the three levels example, at an International Association culture and knowledge. Words are tins of Arabic mean that register is a particular of Conference Interpreters event in lled with meaning. If you know a word concern? How about regional inuences? Casablanca, Morocco, in January 2017, but are unaware of its cultural baggage, No reasonable translator or interpreter most of the interpreters I met asked me then you only know words in a vacuum. will deny that register is of great the same question one is asked in the U.S. This is no good at all. Words carry much importance in our profession. I believe (“What software do you use?”). These cultural, social, and political signicance. those who have mastered MSA must days, translation software is used in the Good interpreters have been to places and have also been exposed to the dialects of remotest corners of the world. have come into direct contact with the many of the countries in this region, and physical, emotional, and affective meaning How would you say that digital will therefore do a good job even when of words. Therefore, like a psychic, communications are affecting the Arabic the register drops from the Classical or they see things, or parts of them, before MSA level to a dialectal colloquial one. language? Is Arabic being in ltrated by the they happen. Because of their thorough It should also be noted that when North same sort of shorthand (abbreviations and background knowledge, professional Africans (Moroccans, Algerians, Tunisians, acronyms) that is used in texting and email interpreters know the landscape and, Libyans, or Mauritanians) switch to their in English? In what way? like tour guides, can maneuver across the local dialect, Middle Easterners (from As the Arab Spring political movement terrain of meanings attached to words Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and demonstrated in 2010, Arab youth and produce an accurate replica of the Jordan) will probably nd them difcult has gone digital.2 In fact, everyone is landscape in another language. Yes, I to understand. However, given that communicating digitally: the older interpret and translate for many agencies North Africans have long been exposed generations are surrounded by their and also for television. As long as one is a

32 The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018 www.atanet.org freelancer, one always has ample room for professionals who have the will and the self-improvement and development. ability to promote understanding through language skills around the world. While When you interpreted at the U.S.-GCC Summit I’ve interpreted for the National Defense in Riyadh in May 2017, were you working as University at events such as the Young part of a team or with a colleague? African Leaders’ Initiative and the Next I interpreted President Donald Trump’s Generation of African Security Sector speech in simultaneous mode to the Senior Leaders Seminar, I’ve mainly delegations gathered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It was also broadcast live on worked at U.S. Central Command events. many channels around the world. Unlike conference programs that last for hours, Finally, do you have any advice for those the president only spoke for about 35 who may be considering a career as an minutes, so I worked alone. Arabic interpreter? My advice to them is to always seek to be Do the leaders of the Gulf States have their Once I got a good grip on my the best in their eld. They should study own interpreters? and work hard to improve themselves and When leaders are being interpreted in working languages (Arabic and better their abilities. They should read consecutive mode, they each have their constantly in their languages. They should own interpreters. You can see this on English), the courts introduced television during a press conference, for me to a world of legal systems, travel and try doing things “the other” example, where interpreters sit very close way. They should immerse themselves in behind the dignitaries. A press conference processes, and terminology unlike the culture of the languages they speak is one of the rare occasions when the anything I had ever experienced. and develop native or native-like uency. interpreter can be seen. They should master their craft and become professionals who are worthy of being hired. Interpreters must always be conscious of cultural differences wherever they work. narcotics or other illegal drugs into the Thank you, Abdelha d, for your insights and There are different levels of formality kingdom is punishable by death. your excellent advice. and subtleties in interpersonal dealings. How about the Africa Summit in 2014? What can you tell us about the cultural NOTES What languages were interpreted during 1 differences or dif culties you had to deal Brown, Anna. “The Challenges of that event? with on the trip to Saudi Arabia? Translating the U.S. Census Questionnaire The United States–Africa Leaders Summit This question relates to two things: into Arabic (Pew Research Center, July was held in Washington, DC in August the professional ethics code interpreters 2016), http://bit.ly/Arabic-census. 2014. It was hosted by President Barack 2 follow, and cultural differences. The code Obama and attended by leaders from 50 The Arab Spring, also referred to as the of ethics applies wherever an interpreter African nations. The summit’s focus was Arab revolutions, was a revolutionary goes. Of course, the level of formality is primarily trade, investment, and African wave of both violent and nonviolent extremely important. There is a discourse security. I was one of the interpreters at that demonstrations, protests, riots, coups, and or style of speech that’s appropriate to event. The primary languages were Arabic civil wars in North Africa and the Middle every setting. It all starts with a good and French, since, at an international level East that began in December 2010 in understanding of how to address people (other than English), Africa speaks Arabic, Tunisia with the Tunisian Revolution. according to their titles and positions French, and Portuguese. For more information, see: (e.g., Excellency, Your Majesty, Honorable, http://bit.ly/Arab-Spring. and Your Honor). What can you tell us about the interpreting As for cultural differences, like any you’ve done in military settings? country, Saudi Arabia has rules and The U.S. military has six regional Tony Beckwith was born regulations by which foreigners must commands around the world: United in Buenos Aires, Argentina, abide. Everyone is expected to respect States Africa Command (AFRICOM), U.S. spent his formative years in the Islamic customs and traditions of its Central Command (CENTCOM), U.S. Montevideo, Uruguay, then set people. Alcoholic beverages, narcotics, European Command (EUCOM), U.S. off to see the world. He moved illegal drugs, and material or publications Northern Command (NORTHCOM), to Texas in 1980 and currently that violate social norms of decency or U.S. Pacic Command (USPACOM), and lives in Austin, Texas, where he works as a writer, disrespect religious beliefs or political U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM). translator, poet, and cartoonist. Contact: orientations are prohibited. Smuggling There is a wealth of opportunity for [email protected]. www.atanet.org American Translators Association 33 RESOURCE REVIEW BY YVES SAVOUREL Okapi Tools: How Translators Can Take Advantage of Them he Okapi Framework is a free RAINBOW translates them. It creates the translated les open-source and cross-platform http://bit.ly/Rainbow-tasks in their original source formats. T project offering a variety of Simply put, Rainbow is a desktop File Format Conversion: This utility tools that can be quite helpful for application that allows you to run a wide allows you, for example, to create a TMX le translators. However, there’s a caveat. range of functions on sets of les. There from a set of translated XLIFF documents, The project was developed initially as are many prede ned utilities, but you Portable Object les, or other bilingual les. a toolset for localization engineers, not can also construct your own pipelines Other output formats are also supported. translators, which can make things a for tasks easily. Here are some of the Translations Comparison: This utility bit more difficult. prede ned utilities: will compare your nal translation At its core, the framework is a set Translation Kit Creation: This utility takes with the MT candidates offered by two of components that are meant to be a set of source les in various formats (e.g., different MT engines. It will also provide put together to create processes for DOCX, IDML, and HTML) and extracts the you with some metrics indicating how doing various translation-related tasks. translatable text into a translation kit you bad the MT candidates are compared to Think of Okapi as a Lego set with can use in computer-assisted translation your awless translation. which developers or technical-minded (CAT) tools. Rainbow has access to all For more information on the many users can build very powerful utilities. the Okapi lters, so you can process a tasks you can perform from with Rainbow, But this isn’t very practical for most wide range of le formats.1 The pipeline please see the Rainbow’s Wiki page at the translators, since they would rather includes steps to segment the source text link above. have something more concrete with and leverage translation resources such as which to work. translation memory (TM) and machine TIKAL translation (MT) engines against the text to Fortunately, among the different things http://bit.ly/Tikal-info translate. (See Figure 1 below.) Okapi offers, there are a few high-level Tikal is a command-line tool that offers applications ready to use “out-of-the-box” Translation Kit Post-Processing: This several functions similar to Rainbow, that anyone can take advantage of without utility merges back the les prepared by but it also has a few extra features. For any programming skills. the Translation Kit Creation utility and then example, you can query various TM

Figure 1: Rainbow

34 The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018 www.atanet.org engines directly. One TM that’s available for free is Amagama, which is the one set up by default for the Translation Toolkit TM connector.2 The following command line, C:\>tikal -q “Open le” -tt -sl en -tl fr, will provide you with the matches shown in Figure 2 at right. You can also query MT engines to machine-translate les in any format supported by the Okapi lter. This provides you with the MTed version in the original format by using a single command line (handy for pseudo- translation tasks). You can also export a le to XLIFF and merge back the translation. For more information see, Tikal’s Wiki page at the link above (or just type “tikal –h” on the command line).

CHECKMATE http://bit.ly/CheckMate-info CheckMate is an application that allows you to run most of Okapi’s veri cation and quality check steps on different types of bilingual les and handle the report interactively. It features veri cations for inline codes, segment length, missing or extra special characters, comparison of patterns between the source and target (e.g., Figure 2: Matches shown using Tikal

Figure 3: CheckMate www.atanet.org American Translators Association 35 RESOURCE REVIEW continued if there’s a URL in the source, there should displayed in CheckMate is updated at is a le standard format to represent be one in the target), and much more. (See the same time. segmentation rules.4) The goal of the Figure 3 on page 35.) You can spell-check, tool is to make it easier to create rules verify the translation against lists of terms, RATEL without having to learn the syntax of and even run the veri cations offered by SRX. You can also test your rules directly http://bit.ly/Ratel-info on a portion of text or on text les. (See the Language Tool library.3 While it’s unlikely that many users will Figure 4 below.) The rules you create One handy feature of CheckMate is need Ratel very often, it can be very with Ratel can be used with Okapi’s that it can check for changes in the input handy on occasions. Ratel is a simple segmentation component, but also with le automatically. This means that when desktop application that can be used to any translation system that implements you make changes in any translation tool create, test, and maintain Segmentation the SRX standard. and save the target le, the list of issues Rules eXchange (SRX) rules. (SRX OLIFANT http://bit.ly/Olifant-help Olifant is a program that can be very useful when you have to work on TMX les. It’s a bit different from the other Okapi tools because it comes from the pre-2008 Okapi Framework that was developed in C# and runs only on Windows. That application has not been ported to the new Java-based framework. As a TMX editor, Olifant lets you do many things on TMX les (e.g., open, group, split, prune, and clean-up TMX entries). Search and replace, code

Figure 4: Ratel

Figure 5: Olifant

36 The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018 www.atanet.org removal, joining entries, and many more functions are also available. For example, Olifant includes a powerful way to ag entries corresponding to a set of given conditions (e.g., duplicated sources or targets, empty targets, source equals to the target, or entries matching a specied regular expression). The function can be applied to existing agged entries and you can reverse the ags. (See Figure 5 on page 36.) Overall, this allows you to select a set of entries and then delete or export them in a separate TMX. A BIG THANKS TO OUR VOLUNTEERS! ATA wishes to thank all the volunteers from chapters, afliates, and other groups for OCELOT their participation during the Annual Conference in Washington, DC. http://bit.ly/ocelot-info Ocelot is an XLIFF editor with strong Houston Interpreters and support for quality metadata through Translators Association the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) www.hitagroup.org standard. It allows you to gather and manipulate information about quality and International Medical Interpreters Association track changes and who did the changes. www.imiaweb.org (See Figure 6 on page 38.) Several other types of properties dened in the ITS Joint National Committee for Languages-National standard are also supported, such as Council for Languages and International Studies text analysis and terminology. Ocelot https://languagepolicy.org supports both XLIFF 1.2 and XLIFF 2 National Capital Area Michigan Translators/Interpreters Network Translators Association (Hospitality www.mitin.org Chapter for Washington, DC) www.ncata.org Midwest Association of Translators More Links for and Interpreters Information on Okapi The American Association of www.matiata.org Language Specialists Okapi Distribution www.taals.net National Council on Interpreting in Health Care https://bintray.com/okapi/Distribution www.ncihc.org You can nd the applications American Council on the Teaching compiled and ready for of Foreign Languages National Museum of Language installation here. www.act .org http://languagemuseum.org Okapi Repositories Association of Translators and Nevada Interpreters and Translators Association https://bitbucket.org/okapiframework Interpreters in the San Diego Area www.nitaonline.org You can nd the source code of www.atisda.org the Okapi projects under the New York Circle of Translators Apache 2.0 license here. Atlanta Association of Interpreters www.nyctranslators.org and Translators Okapi Tools Northern California Translators Association www.aait.org User Group on Yahoo www.ncta.org http://bit.ly/Okapi-Tools-Group Carolina Association of Many of the end users on this group Northwest Translators and Interpreters Society Translators and Interpreters are translators, so this is an excellent www.notisnet.org www.catiweb.org forum to post your questions. Translators without Borders Colorado Translators Association Okapi Wiki https://translatorswithoutborders.org http://okapiframework.org/wiki www.cta-web.org Wiki documentation on Okapi is Upper Midwest Translators and Delaware Valley Translators Association available here. Interpreters Association www.dvta.org www.umtia.org www.atanet.org American Translators Association 37 RESOURCE REVIEW continued

les. Another interesting aspect of Ocelot is that it can use plugins, allowing it to be customized to speci c needs.

FILTERS PLUGIN FOR OMEGAT http://bit.ly/Okapi- lters-plugin In addition to Okapi’s standalone tools, there is also the Okapi Filters Plugin for OmegaT. As its name indicates, it’s a plugin for OmegaT that allows you to use some of the Okapi lters directly from OmegaT. (See Figure 7 at left.) This seamless integration adds support in OmegaT for quite a few formats, including SDLXLIFF, Markdown, TTX, YAML, JSON, ITS-driven XML, XLIFF 2, and InDesign.

CLOSING THOUGHTS Overall, while some of the components of the Okapi Framework may be a bit technically challenging, there are a few tools that are relatively easy to use. Many of the end users in the Okapi Tools user group on Yahoo are translators, so you should not Figure 6: Ocelot hesitate to ask any questions you may have there. (See the sidebar on page 37 for this link, as well as other useful resources.)

Remember, if you have any ideas and/or suggestions regarding helpful resources or tools you would like to see featured, please e-mail Jost Zetzsche at [email protected].

NOTES 1 See the information on the le formats Okapi supports, http://bit.ly/Okapi-supported-formats. 2 See http://amagama.translatehouse.org. 3 See https://languagetool.org/development. 4 See the SRX recommendation on the website of the Globalization and Localization Association, www.gala-global.org/srx-20-april-7-2008.

Yves Savourel has been involved in internationalization and localization for 27 years. He has worked on various localization standards, including TMX, SRX, XLIFF, and ITS. He is the author of XML Internationalization and Localization. He is part of the Okapi Framework open source project and currently works for Argos Figure 7: Okapi Filters Plugin for OmegaT Multilingual. Contact: [email protected].

38 The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018 www.atanet.org ATA wishes to thank all of our sponsors and exhibitors for helping to make this conference such a success!

Crimson Interactive Inc.—Ulatus Language On Demand, Inc. Oyraa www.ulatus.com www.visitlod.com www.oyraa.com Sponsors Cross-Cultural Communications, LLC Liberty Language Services Plunet Inc. Platinum www.cultureandlanguage.net www.libertylanguageservices.com SDL PLC www.plunet.com www.sdltrados.com CulturaLink Lilt RWS Life Sciences www.theculturalink.com www.lilt.com Bronze www.rws.com/services/ Alliant Insurance Services, Inc. CWU, Inc. LinguaLinx, Inc. life-sciences-translations www.lingualinx.com ata.alliant.com www.CWUinc.us Schreiber Translations, Inc. Supporting CyraCom Localize Africa www.schreibernet.com California Court translate.cyracom.com www.localizeafrica.com SDL PLC Interpreters Program Divergent Language Solutions Magna Legal Services www.courts.ca.gov/interpreters www.sdltrados.com www.divergentls.com www.magnals.com Shenzhen Cloud Translation National Language Service Corps Maier German DS-Interpretation, Inc. Technology Co., Ltd. www.nlscorps.org Legal & Financial www.ds-interpretation.com www.glodomtec.com SpeakEasy Services, Corp. Interpretation & Translation EOIR Interpreters United, www.SpeakEasyServices.com MateCat SOS International, LLC Communication Workers of America www.SOSi.com Media www.cwa-union.org www.matecat.com MultiLingual MCIS Language Solutions STAR Group America, LLC FBI/National Virtual Translation Center www.multilingual.com www.mcislanguages.com www.stargroupamerica.net http://bit.ly/National-Virtual- Translation-Center memoQ The Language Doctors, Inc. www.memoq.com www.tldinc.org GALA—Globalization and Localization Association Memsource Translate.com Exhibitors www.gala-global.org www.memsource.com www.translate.com 1099 Accountant, LLC GlobaLexicon Americas, LLC Middlebury Institute Transn IOL Technology Co., Ltd. www.1099accountant.com www.globalexicon.com of International Studies www.transn.com/index.html Across Systems GmbH www.miis.edu GLOBO TransPerfect, Inc. www.my-across.net www.helloglobo.com Mission Essential www.transperfect.com AECOM www.missionessential.com Graduate Studies in Interpreting and University of California www.aecom.com Moravia Translation, University of Maryland San Diego Extension www.moravia.com African Language Consultants, LLC www.gsit.umd.edu extension.ucsd.edu/translation www.africanlanguageconsultants.com MVM, Inc. ICA Language Services University of Illinois/ www.icalanguages.com www.mvminc.com Alliant Insurance Services, Inc. Center for Translation Studies National Association of Judiciary ata.alliant.com International Monetary Fund www.translation.illinois.edu

www.imf.org/external/index.htm Interpreters and Translators AOA Medical, Inc. www.najit.org U.S. Department of State, www.unimedmassager.com Interpreter Education Online Office of Language Services National Language Service Corps www.interpretereducationonline.com Atril www.nlscorps.org www.state.gov/m/a/ols/index.htm www.atril.com InTrans Book Service National Security Agency Widener University Bilingual LS Kent State University www.intelligencecareers.gov Delaware Law School www.bilingual-ls.com www.kent.edu/appling delawarelaw.widener.edu/legalstudies New York University Conference Rental Kiva.org School of Professional Studies Wordfast, LLC www.conferencerental.com www.kiva.org www.sps.nyu.edu www.wordfast.com www.atanet.org American Translators Association 39