David Smith Translation

Google Translate with SDL Trados Connection Problems

2011-10-31T11:06:00.000-07:00

Firstly, let me say that I hate Google Translate most of the time. For the kind of Technical Chinese to English translations I do, the results are usually hilarious (unintentionally) and not the slightest bit useful. However, on some occasions, it can be handy. For example, if I come across a list of chemical elements, for the heavier elements, all I would normally do is google them and find the Chinese name, there's no way I could memorize the heavier stuff. Google Translate can do that for me, saving the trouble. The problem is that the Google Translate doesn't seem to care about the quality of the source website and does occasionally get it wrong (so I have to double and triple check everything). Anyway, for some jobs it can be handy to use Google Translation, but it has to be used only in rare circumstances.

Thus, there are two important points to take into account. Firstly, the fact is that Goolge Translate has "HORRIBLE" licensing agreements. There has been a lot of writing about this on the web recently, you can see an example of of critical blog article here. Basically, Google keeps everything you do and can do whatever they want with it. For that reason, virutally no clients allow you to use Google Translate on their projects, but as I said, it can still have its uses in certain circumstances.

For that reason, it was a real problem when google recently started charging from the use of Google Translate (as mentioned on their blog here). This means that you have to register with "Google Checkout" and you will be billed for using Google Translate. You can argue about whether it's a good thing to be charged, but I guess it's up to them. The problem is that this change suddenly caused a problem to Trados Studio 2009. A quick look around the translation blogs will show that people were furious with SDL about that.

The only solution seemed to offer was to upgrade to Studio 2011 and then to WAIT until they release another service pack. The main rivals to SDL seemed to catch on a lot quicker, for example MemoQ has already updated its code, and so have a couple of the other TM providers.

Thus, a workaround was needed for SDL translate. Luckily, Translator's Corner came to the rescue. The solution is as follows. Trados Studio sends a call to the Google Translate system. We download some software (Fiddler) that allows us to "catch" the call and modify it. When then modify the call to the settings that work with the new paid version of the Google Translate system. When it comes back we catch the response and send it back to Trados as required.

Go over to Translator's Corner to see exactly how it works and get all the necessary code etc. It's worth using, but don't go using Google Translate unless you really know what you are doing.

Invoices

2011-10-16T09:13:00.000-07:00

I hate writing invoices. As a freelance Chinese to English translator, I have to write invoices for each individual job I do. This month I've already written more than 10 invoices. I thought about adopting another on-line solution such as Fresh Books, and I did some research into the possibility.

So the first thing I needed to know was, how much time do I spend writing invoices. That was easy enough to determine. I took an average over 10 invoices and discovered that they take "x" minutes each (I don't want to give out the exact number due to client confidentiality agreements).

Next step would to work out the cost of doing the same using a website. I logged onto the website for Fresh Books one of the many online companies with similiar services. Next step was to look through the pricing and try to work out the cost for sending an invoice. With the websites, the initial time would be rather high, but once it was up and running, the main costs would just be fees. Let's call that price "y".

So now comes the easy maths. If x is more than y, then it would be worth my time to move to y. And x was considerably less than y. In fact I did some work and found that in order to justify paying even the just the fees (not taking into account the time and trouble to log on etc). I would need something like 30-50 invoices per month.

My conclusion is that at this point, using a website to do my invoicing would save time, make my life easier, and allow me to focus more on my work, but since the main reason I'm not earning more money is a lack of clients (ideally I'd have work to do for 8 hours every day all year round), rather than a lack of time, it's not worth doing anything like that at this point.

Other translator's I've spoken to usually do their own invoicing as I do. Some use a bookkeeper. I think it depends on the language combination. Germans/French/Spanish/Italian etc seem to get as much work as they can handle, so it might be worth doing it for them. More unusual languages like Chinese will mostly have at least a few hours per week to catch up with their invoicing for free.

Backup Computers

2011-10-12T09:41:00.000-07:00

In order to do my Chinese to English technical translation job and ensure that I'm ready for anything, I decided a while ago to keep two identical laptops. I figure that if one laptop goes wrong the other can be used right away. Seems like a good idea? Here's what happened.

Two identical Acer Aspire laptops

The day I purchased my second Acer Aspire 4752 two things happened. Firstly I noticed that the new laptop only had the Intel i3 Core chip while my original one (black in the picture above) had the i5. They cost the same amount and came from the same store (Dixons in Ealing, West London), but I guess I should have checked that beforehand. Other than that they seemed identical so I was happy to let it go. The i3 was to be my backup machine anyway.

While I was turning on the new machine for its first use, I plugged my old computer into my TV to watch a TV show while I was waiting (new series of True Blood - crap by the way). Suddently my computer went BANG and turned off. I waited a couple of days and then turned it back on. It kept dying midway through the bootup.

So now I've got a dead "old" laptop. And a "new" laptop which I've more or less made usable from my external hard drive backup, I lost about a days work in the process. I also had to purchase a new SDL Trados license to use the second machine (I'll write about that in more detail at some point) because it wasn't letting me install it on another machine.

I decided the best thing would be to take out the hard drive of my "old" laptop. Back it up, and then format the machine. So I opened it up and took out the hard drive.

My old laptop opened up with the hard drive showing

Next step was take out the hard drive (which takes a bit of skill) and then plug it into my external case, which is USB powered. The idea being that it then becomes an external drive and I can copy all my data from that. (Although I do keep backups, they are not totally all-inclusive and I wanted to save as much data as possible - a lesson there perhaps).

The hard drive removed and in an external casing

After a bit of messing about I was able to copy all the data from that drive (my old computer) and so I didn't lose any data. I did lose a lot of time with all the messing around and trying to figure out what I'm doing. Now I know you're going to say I'm mad, but I swear I looked and looked, and there were some screws left over after I put the hard drive back in the "old" (broken) laptop.

Screws left over after putting everything back together!

So now the memory from the broken laptop is restored I decided to restore the factory settings. That's what I do and it works for a couple of days before breaking again. Then I tried another factory reset and it kept getting stuck.

Laptop stuck on system restore process

The old laptop was still only a six months old so I phoned Dixon's support. After some messing around I was put through to a company called Know How, the lady on the phone tried to get me to run a system restore, but I kept explaining that it was definately a hardware error. She agreed that they would come and collect the laptop from my home, repair it and then return it.

They took the laptop and agree to return it a week later. Close to the return date, I got a job overseas so I had to go away for 2 weeks. I phoned Know How and told them to delay the delivery until I got back. After that I got 17 calls from them ranging from "Yeah Mr David, I'm outside your house with your new laptop as agreed", to "you missed the agreed delivery today, when will you be available? I'll rearrange for tomorrow".

Eventually I got back home and got the laptop back in working order. A bit of a long story, but I thought it might be interesting. My main lessons from the experience were:

1. Always keep receipts (otherwise returning goods is a nightmare)
2. Backup everything (not just urgent or important, but everything). Also keep disks for ALL programs installed on the computer.
3. I'm not really happy with Acer. Both laptops seem a bit buggy to use, and a laptop shouldn't die within 6 months like that. In future I'll pay a bit more for an IBM or Lenovo which I hear have better keyboards anyway.
4. Keeping the two identical laptops is difficult (have to install everything on two machines/possible license issues/bugs need to be fixed twice). It might be better to think about a network of somekind?

What do you guys do for backups? Can you recommend any good solutions? I hate having to double my effort running installers etc just for the 1% chance that something might go wrong. Is there any other way???

Problems with Sub-languages in Trados Studio

2011-08-19T01:15:00.000-07:00

One great blog about using Trados Studio is Tuomas Kostiainen's nice blog My Migration to Trados Studio 2009.

I read his post with great interest about the problem with sublanguages. It's a real problem that has affected me a great deal.

So the problem is basically that if you have say a "Chinese to English (UK)" Translation Memory setup. But now you get sent a US English job. When you try to open your Translation Memory you get told "wrong language" and basically can't.

My work around was always just to have 3 TM's Chinese - English (UK), (US), and (Canada). After working on say the US TM I have to export it and use it to create new Canadian and UK English TM's. If I then work on the English TM, I export it and create a new US and Candian TM and so on. In a week I'll quite often do a few US and a few UK English jobs (with the occassional Canadian one thrown in), so as Thomas says this method is "getting old very fast".

In reality I am quite happy to always work in US English and then do the changes into UK or Candian English in Microsoft Word, so I don't really deserve this hastle! Does anyone really keep separate TM's for UK/US/ and Candian English? Not to mention some of the other sublanguages which are available "Belize/Carribean/Ireland?" Is Irish English spelt or written differently to UK English? A quick look at the Wikipedia page tells us that "Ireland does not have its own spelling rules and British English spelling is used throughout the island."

Actually there really aren't many spelling or grammatical difference in Chinese to English technical translation into UK or US English. One of the terms that comes up quite often which is problematic is "suplher"/"sulfer" (it's not as simple as having the "ph" used in the UK and "f" used in the US though as this Rod's Chemistry Blog points out). Aside from that, and a few other very cosmetic differences (z's for s'z and so on). I don't even think I've got any terms that I would ever mix up if the US and UK TM's were merged.

It's a real problem and impacts quite severely on my use of Trados. A little thing like that can add 20 mins of work to a job, and that totally negates the time saved using a TM in the first place. It's a good reason for looking into something like WordFast, or sticking with Trados 2007 of course!

Windows 7 SP1

2011-03-09T08:14:00.000-08:00

So I've been having a lot of trouble installing Win 7 SP1. I would leave the update running and it got to 50% and then froze. I tried leaving it running over night twice, but on both occasions it didn't go anywhere.

I read all over the net but I couldn't find anyone else who was having a similiar problem. Most people were saying the update took about one hour rather than the 1/2 hour suggested by Microsoft but that it eventually worked fine.

I read round and round, until I came across something that might be interesting to translators. Apparatently, Windows 7 has trouble updating, if you have more than 20 language packs installed. I had a look and found I've got about 35 language packs, all the European languages, plus most of the Asian and quite a few of the African languages. As a translator I figured it was better to have them and not use them, than need them but not have them.

However, I suppose I'm unlikely ever to have to deal with languages like Thai, Hebrew, Turkish and so on, so I selected about 15 languages to remove from the system. Firstly I was amazed that doing that saved a whole 1.6GB of my hard drive memory. Secondly, I'm amazed how slow the process is, with each langauge taking a good 5 minutes.

As a technical translator I'm not all that worried about having less language packs on my computer, but what about for translation PM's? They need to work with potentially hundreds of different languages, so what are they supposed to do about this problem?

Anyway, if you're having a problem with Windows Update, this could be the reason.

Windows 7 SP1

2011-02-24T18:20:00.000-08:00

So SP1 has become available for download on Windows 7. They announced it on their blog:

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2011/02/22/windows-7-sp1-now-available-for-everyone.aspx

and it appeared in my "new updates are available" box.

I started downloading it, but it seemed to hang at 25%, and after about 4 hours I gave up and told it to cancel. It hung for about an hour, so I just powered off my laptop.

I tried again twice, but each time, it did a couple of hours work and then seemed to hang. I've just been out for the day, and I left my computer at home running the update, and after at least 8 hours it still hadn't finished. So again, I've had to cancel it.

I've been looking through all the usual blogs, but I seem to be the only person with this problem. I'll run a really careful backup and everything, and then try again overnight. This is the first big problem I've had with Win 7, and it has impacted on my abililty to get my work done.

Very strange, and very annoying problem.

Keeping Track of E-Mails

2011-02-17T09:34:00.000-08:00

When I first started I used a Yahoo email account, but I found it got flooded by spam, so I moved to a dedicated gmail account. This account is only used for translation related e-mails, and I try to make sure my personal e-mails go to my hotmail account (which I keep secret).

I've been using the gmail account now for a couple of years to do all the running for my technical translation company. Over that time, I've refined a system which I use to handle my incoming work. When an email arrives, it gets pushed to my Blackberry, and I always try to read it straight away. If it's a job from an existing client here's what I do:

1. Download the attached job (usually a word file or pdf)
2. Reply to the email giving my deadline etc.
At this point gmail keeps that email at the top of the list of emails in my account which is really handy.
3. When the client confirms I get on with the job and send the completed job as a reply.
Again gmail keeps this email at the top of my list.
4. Then I sort of the invoice and send that as another reply.
5. When I've done that, I'll label the entire job as the name of the client (I've got about 50 or 60 regular clients, and for each client I've got a folder), and move the email conversation into the client's folder.

That's always been the most simple and quickest method I could figure out. But now as I'm growing I'm seeing some areas for improvement in this workflow.

Firstly, I'm now at 20% of my maximum inbox capacity, and at some point, I'm going to have to start going through and archiving or deleting older messages. Secondly, once my invoice is sent, I'm relying on my accounting spreadsheet to remind me that I am waiting on payment, and I'd like to have this function also done in my mail box. Thirdly, I'm frequently getting more than 10 email per day, and it's easy for them to get lost when I'm busy, and my approach always favours the newest emails, and sometimes if 5 or 6 emails arrive in the morning, and then they keep coming throughout the day, it might take a while to get down to the first email that arrived.

I had a thought about what would be PERFECT functionality if it was available.

1. Accepting a job automatically puts an entry into my Google calendar for the correct deadline.
2. Accepting a job automatically puts into into my accounting software.
3. Finishing a job automatically generates an invoice from the accounting software, and sends it to the correct person, making a change onto my calendar.

Short of that, I'm experimenting with Active InBox at the moment, which is a nice free software program designed to integrate with Gmail. So far I'm happy but I'll write up a proper review over the coming weeks. The address for download is http://www.activeinboxhq.com/ it was very well reveiwed on lifehacker, http://uk.lifehacker.com, which is a great little site by the way for people looking for the latest technology.

SDL Trados Multiterm Upgrade

2011-01-23T18:44:00.000-08:00

After writing this original article, I got some feedback. It seems the instructions I refer to are for upgrading from MT 2007 to 2009. They came up on my page when I downloaded the Muliterm upgrade, and I just assumed they were for upgrading to SP3 as opposed to other stuff. It does say things like "This guide provides instructions for installing and configuring SDL MultiTerm 2009 SP3". Anyway bear that in mind when you read this, and read through the comments at the end.

So recently, I upgraded my Trados Studio software up to Service Pack 3.

When I upgrade my other software (like Windows 7 for example), here's what happen. I see a little thing saying "upgrade available" and click "download", or in some cases I open a file (like with Adobe Acrobat), and it gives me a message saying "upgraded".

NOT with Trados Multierm.

First you have to log onto their little website database and download the BIG .exe files.
I can't even bring myself to describe the entire process, but this will give you an idea of the quality of this wonderful 600POUNDS! software.

Then you click to download the "instructions for upgrade"
You then get a .zip file (it's big enough to need zipping you see!) containing the large pdf with all the information on how to upgrade your Trados Multiterm!
The document is "37" pages.
I'll say that again.

The help document that we are supposed to read to learn how to upgrade our Trados Multiterm is 37 pages. Thirty seven! That's more pages than a lot of people translate in a month!.

So this fun and action packed document was obviously skillfully written with the user in mind. You always know that an upgrade instructions document is useful when it contains an index and contents page, and when the "about this guide" section is two pages.

It takes two pages to describe the guide to upgrade the software!

Thanks for the extra work required to learn about how to upgrade the software I purchased expensively. I really appreciate that, because I wasn't busy working for my clients, improving my ability to work as a technical translator, or spending time with friends and family. This upgrade has made my life better.

Patent Translation Industry

2011-01-06T08:37:00.000-08:00

So I've just come across this rather old article

http://www.euractiv.com/en/innovation/eu-seeks-break-patent-translation-deadlock-news-495842

It gives a breakdown of the costs of translating patents, and some of the suggested solutions. It doesn't cover Chinese to English, as it focuses on the big three of English, French and German, but it's interesting.

I've been doing quite a lot of patent work lately, and my experience seems to be that the volume of work is increasing. One of the suggestions for handling the EU problem is machine translation, but that will never work for Chinese to English. (Chinese to English machine translations are hillarious but totally unintelligable for anything technical or formal).

I certainly think that patent costs are totally excessive at the moment, costing up to 20k GBP for a single European patent. That amount would certainly discourage me from paying a patent. But...

Here's where I start to smell a rat. If you look at any area of industry, one of the most understood things is that its efficient to have those who pay more, pay more and those who can't pay more, pay less. That's why we have DVD regions, an Asian consumer might not be able to pay 20GBP for a DVD, while it's only a couple of hours pay in the UK, so the Asian DVDs are sold cheaper, and the regions are put on them to stop the Asian DVD's getting sold in the UK, forcing us to pay the higher amount.

The same principle applies for first class travel. The extra costs of the leg room etc, are really not that great, and the main thing first class does, is to ensure that people who can easily pay 2k for flight to New York do so, leaving the rest of us to pay somewhat less.

So why is there no discussion of this in the patent arena. With large companies (APPLE for example) paying maybe 100k for their patents, which usually bring them hundreds of millions in profits, and smaller and medium companies paying less.

Of course that will never happen because the large companies have too much control over everything. Still... we can but hope

Updating a TM in Trados Studio

2011-01-02T12:25:00.001-08:00

So I've finally had a bit of quiet time over the holiday, and I've used it to go through my TMs (translation memories - used for computer aided translations) with my Trados Studio 2009.

It's straighforward enough, but there are a couple of points worth mentioning. So I thought I'd write a quick description of the process. It's something that a good technical translator will need to do from time to time. I aim to go through most of my TMs at least once or twice per year and tidy them up.

First open Studio and click on Translation Memories shown on the bottom left of the main page.
You should see the Translation Memories Screen.

Open the Translation Memory you want to edit by clicking "Open Translation Memory" On the second row at the top, just under the "File" menu. Select the memory you wish to edit.

Here come the two parts that I found a little counter-intuitive.

The first point to mention is that as I was looking through my TMs I kept thinking "why are all my TMs only 50 rows big". I was starting to think I'd accidently opened them in some strange preview mode or something, and then I noticed the little blue arrows at the top under the "Open Translation Memory" button. Clicking that arrow moves to the next 50 rows, and so on. Once you've moved past the first page, the "back" arrow activates, and you can navigate backwards and forwards through the records that way.

The second little point is that when you modify a record nothing seems to happen at first, but after you make the first edit. The little "save" icon on the top left under the "Open Translation Memory" button activates, and clicking that will save the current modifications.

Finally, a useful features is the Batch Edit feature, up on the top right hand side of the same bar. It allows you to do some things which might be helpful for a Chinese to English technical translator. For instance you can change all the Chinese commas into English commas, or vice versa, which could help ensure the maximum number of 100% matches. You could also put full stops after all the records or anything like that.

Anyway, just some very superficial observations, but they might come in handy if you're trying to learn the new software. Have a wonderful x-mas.

David

Gmail Fixed? Signatures

2010-11-07T17:56:00.001-08:00

Since my last posting, I've discovered that gmail is suddenly working how it used to again. Perhaps it was all a dream!

I started adding gmail footers to my emails today, hoping that they can ensure that client's always have my details to hand. I found that after adding it and saving, it took almost three hours before they started appearing.

I also notice that they add two lines before the footer. So if you put "DAVID" as your footer, at the end of your email you will see:

--
DAVID

Even though you never entered the "--" bit. It's not the end of the world, but worth being aware of. Especially for me. In Chinese "-" looks a lot like the character for "one", so having extra things lying around is only going to cause confusion. I can imagine emails reading "so call my number on 02231 434 223", and then the computer adds "11" on the next line. The problem is mitigated by the fact that most people don't write "-" to mean one in Chinese, they usually use "1", but a little control would have been nice!

Gmail Going Backwards?

2010-09-26T19:30:00.000-07:00

I thought I was going crazy about this gmail "feature". When I look at my inbox, it shows one line per conversation, with each conversation showing a sentence from the most recent mail in that conversation. So I would scan down and see lots of "OK thanks please send your invoice", or "this was the wrong file, please re-send" or something like that.

Suddenly from a couple of weeks ago, the sentences now come from the original first mail in the conversation and nearly always say "David could you do this job please" so I keep having to open all the conversations.

I thought I was going crazy and nothing had actually changed, I'd had some strange dream where gmail was totally logical. Maybe it was some kind of strange trauma because they've cancelled Google Wave. But then I found quite a few discussions on line talking about the same thing:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=304a416a8413b3c7&hl=en

Basically this new way of doing it sucks! When you've got conversations going back with 20 or 30 mails, seeing the original mail is not the least bit helpful. I wonder if they are trying to get us to spend more time creating folders rather than just scanning to see what we need to deal with or (CONSPIRACY THEORY ALERT) they are doing it to try and get us all to use the Priority Inbox function (which is a great thing by the way, but I don't really see the point, a bit like Wave really).

New Version of OmegaT

2010-07-30T18:22:00.000-07:00

I have just done some testing with the newly released version of OmegaT. It's 2.18 Beta. The main difference is a function called "aggregate tags" which basically reduces the number of tags on the documents by a huge amount. If you've used OmegaT in the past you may have noticed how annoying all the tags were, especially when they cause all kinds of strange problems with matching the TM. This new feature really helps a lot with that function.

I downloaded the new version from http://sourceforge.net/projects/omegat/ and don't forget you can leave a donation to the designers if you wish. For me the tags were a really serious annoyance so now I can think seriously about using OmegaT again.

The new release came out on the 29th of July and is still in Beta, so the default download on source forge won't get it, you have to click to see the full list of versions and get it from there. You can always check www.omegaT.com for more information.

Titles Last

2010-07-05T17:12:00.000-07:00

When I started translating a friend suggested that I translate the main body of a paragraph first, before translating the title. That's because titles are usually shortened, and it will be easier to translate when you've read through and understood the main paragraph.

It has become second nature to me now to skip through the titles, section headings, paragraph headings and stuff like that, and jump straight onto the main text. I was translating a document last week where I had totally misunderstood the title. It was only when I'd translated the actual text, that I could go back and change the title, where I had misunderstood what the writer meant.

It always reminds me of the sentence "man eating chicken". It would be a good idea to read on and look at whether or not the following sections talks about a giant chicken, or a man sitting in Nando's before deciding how to translate the title. I've also noticed a lot of people get stuck and discouraged on the titles or section headings when they don't really need to.

So that may be some great advice.

Xingneng - Performance of a Computer / Properties of a chemical

2010-05-10T12:33:00.000-07:00

One word which I often find mistranslated in Chinese to English technical translations is the Chinese word "性能 (xingneng).

If you look in the Wenlin dictionary for example. The definition is:

性能 xìngnéng n. natural capacity; function (of machine/etc.); property | Zhè ¹tái diànnǎo ∼ bùcuò. This computer has a good capacity.
33.2 average occurrences per million characters of text

So in a sentence like "the phone's xingneng are good" a lot of translators would tend to use something like "the phone's properties are good". However, when refering to technology xingneng usually means something like performance. As in "a high performance computer". So "the phone has good performance" would be the best translation.

In other instances it can refer to properties as in "chemical properties". Usually properties is used for biological terms or physical things, whereas performance is used for computers, phones, and other electronic devices.

Unfortuntaly a lot of dictionaries haven't caught up to this usage.

TO3000 verus Excel

2010-04-23T08:43:00.000-07:00

There's nothing I love more than using technology to save time. I just find that when I use Trados or Dejavu or whatever for my translation work, it really doens't save much time at all. The reason is that I've never done a big enough document in one go that was repetitive enough for them to really become useful. The only advantage to owning them from my perspective is that from time to time some of my clients do ask that I use those formats, so I have to be able to use it.

I've just downloaded a free trial of a program called TO3000. It's basically a piece of software which helps with invoicing, and handling payments etc from clients. My current solution is to use excel along with a few macros of my own. The question is can TO3000 actually speed up my work. I'm playing with it at the moment, but my feeling is that it won't save me much time at all.

I just think that with the rather low volumes of work that I tend to get, there isn't really any technology that will save me much time. Maybe if I was starting out from scratch the software would have been really useful. The first few invoices I created took me ages to do, but then when I'd done them I basically just cut and paste and invoices take me seconds. Maybe I could have saved a lot of time in the begining.

If the software cost around 40-50GBP maybe it would be worthwhile, but for more than 150GBP I just don't think it will pay for itself. I'm still in the process of looking through the software and I'll post a better review when I've done so.

Carbon Capture and Storage Or Sequestration

2010-04-20T06:46:00.001-07:00

Here's an interesting thing that might come in handy. If you look at the Chinese expression for Chinese Capture and Storage you will often see it translated as "Carbon Capture and Storage" and also you will see it translated as "Carbon Capture and Sequestration". Now for quite a while I couldn't figure out why there seems to be a difference in the terms. Dictionary definitions of "storage and sequestration" are similiar.

Looking around at some websites such as the China Dialouge, I also found that they were seemingly translated randomly. Until I came across a nice rule.

Storage and Sequestration are basically the same thing. However by convention sequestration is increasingly being used for under land (as opposed to ocean) storage. So when takling about Norways big CSS projects (which take place out at sea) we should probably say "storage", but when talking about anything else we should probably say "sequestration".

However, there is another important consideration. When talking about land storage, both sequestration and storage are appropriate. The choice comes down to a more subtle distinction.

Sequestration basically means seperation. As in "the seperation of church and state", this means "the seperation of the captured carbon from the atmosphere". This is slightly different to storage which suggest you may wish to use it later for something. So when talking about EOR (enhanced oil recovery) where they use the carbon to increase the amount of oil they can mine, maybe they are not planning to use the carbon for anything, and sequestration might be better, but when they are talking about something like trapping the carbon and then using it later for industrial applications, maybe storage is better.

Another consideration is consistency. It would be strange to keep switching between storage and sequestration unless it is necessary. Although sequestration normally means on land, it can also be used for ocean storage just as well. Probably the best bet is to use "storage" unless you are certain that "sequestration" has a more appropriate meaning.

Deja Vu Free Trial

2010-04-19T10:51:00.000-07:00

Last time I used Dejavu (a translation software package) before this week was about a year or so ago, and I remember it seemed very unstable at that time. There was also the annoying problem of having to plug in this dongle which doens't work well for my laptop because my USB cuts out from time to time for no reason.

I downloaded and used a 30 day trial of the program this week and I was actually quite impressed. It didn't seem to be as buggy as I remember it at all. It ran rather nicely with my Windows 7. I'm not sure if the fully paid version would come with a dongle or not, but I've quite enjoyed using the programme.

I still have a really serious gripe with it which is to do with the tags. In Chinese the tags are virtually never going to be in the same place as they are in English. In fact the tags will very rarely even cover the same sections of text that the English text requires. One of the major reasons for this is that Chinese doesn't have any articles (the, an, a), whereas English has them before virtually every single sentence. Having to keep moving the tags around seems like a lot of extra work just to accomdate the word "a".

I can't really think of a purely technical way to solve the tags problem though. I guess the system could look and decide whether an article is needed and try to automatically suggest the new location. It might be able to look at the form of the word. A better solution is to bear things like that in mind during the creation of the Chinese document.

I'm still not convinced that dejavu would save me any money with my own personal way of working, and it seems rather expensive, but thankfully it's cheaper than Trados.

Annoying Word Bug

2010-03-12T08:35:00.000-08:00

Ocassionally I work on very large word documents. I've find twice now that they get a really annoying but if you have a lot of text in tables. What happens is that if you scroll up and down with the page up and page down keys it works OK, but if you use the up and down directional keys or if you scroll up with the mouse, text text becomes extremely buggy and the wrong sentences appears to overwrite other sentences.

I'm wondering if this is a problem which wouldn't occur on a 64 bit machine. I've heard quite a few people saying that Windows 64 bit allows much much larger and more complex spreadsheets, so I would assume to does the same for Word documents.

The cut off point seems to be on around 60 pages. Has anyone else had any experience with this problem?

Transition to Windows 7

2010-02-16T16:17:00.000-08:00

I have two (supposedly) identical laptops. I mainly use one, but always keep a backup on the other so the most I'll ever loose is a days work.

There are a lot of things to talk about regarding the problems of keeping two identical laptops. I've decided its time to upgrade from XP to Windows 7. So I spent the day a few days ago installing Windows 7 over my Vista machine (it was originally Vista but I hated it so much I rolled back to XP). It installed nicely right on top without any special changes.

So far I've had no complaints and its been able to run all my software including some of the rarer translation and dictionary stuff. All my free software like Avira, VLC, firefox installed with absolutly no problems too.

So over all I'm rather happy with Windows 7. I'll keep one laptop on XP and the other in Windows 7 for a while and if it still goes well in a couple of months I'll try to upgrade the other one too.

This leads me to my main gripe! In order to do this I will have to buy two separate copies of Windows 7. I don't think keeping two laptops is particularly unusual and i don't think I should be made to pay 130GBP for another copy. What bugs me is that Microsoft continually do little things like that to make a bit of extra profit here and there, and they then complain about software piracy.

I'm not supporting piracy, but in cases like mine I've actually got quite a lot of sympathy for people who feel hard done by.

However, Windows 7 has so far run very well! A huge improvement on Vista, and almost as good as XP!

Trados Studio

2010-02-11T13:36:00.000-08:00

Hi guys,

Some people may be interested in using Trados Studio. It's the new "version" of Trados workbench. Basically a powerful translation tool. I suspect that any professional translators either know of it, or use it.

Trados Studio is a new system, a bit like Windows 7 to Workbench's Windows Vista.

At the moment a lot of people are undecided whether or not it's worth the investment. For me personally I have to say no, because I don't get anything like the volume of work needed for it to pay for itself. It's easily possible for me to do all my jobs slowly and carefully without any CAT tools unless otherwise requested by the client.

So if you are considering Studio there's a nice little blog out there: http://tradoshelp.wordpress.com./

It's a guy who is trying to get used to using Trados Studio and blogging his findings as he does so. You may wish to check it out!

Take care,
David

A Nice Little Application

2010-01-29T18:55:00.000-08:00

When translating, I'm always having to save things here and there, and backup stuff here and there and download this and that.

I found a little app that's incredibly small and does something which sounds totally pointless but is actually pretty nice. When you click save in XP (and Visa) you get a selection popup asking which folder you want to save to. Now one thing I always have to do is navigate backwards and forwards in this folder looking for my directory. Sometimes I save drafts in a different location to originals for example so I have to go up and down directories.

On the left hand side of that little save prompt that pops up the computer gives a couple of default locations. I think it gives "My computer", "Desktop", "C:/" or something along those lines. With this little application The Places Bar Tweaker from isoIsland you can edit the folders that appear on the left hand side. So now I've got three links to my most commonly used translation folders.

Effectively it's totally cut down on the time I need to spend going up and down while saving documents. In all honesty it probably doens't save that much time, but its nice to be able to do it without all that trouble and makes the day a bit more pleasant.

So if you need it why not google isoIsland or Place Bar Tweaker and see if you can find it. It's really really tiny and very friendly.

Translation Dictionary Review sobolsoft.com Converter

2010-01-14T05:41:00.000-08:00

Another quick review of a translation resource. This is called the "English to Chinese (Simplified and Traditional) and Chinese to English Converter Software" produced by sobolsoft.com.

I've tried to use it a few times, but I've generally not liked it very much. It may be more appropriate for people who need longer strings translated, but then I would then prefer to use something like google translate or babelfish.

The software opens as a window in Microsoft and allows you to enter a great big string of text; it also allows you to load text from a text file. Once it's open you enter your text into the box and click translate and it translates it for you.

I guess the main advantage is that it's possible to translate a big string at once rather than having to enter one word at a time. The main problem from my perspective is that as a freelance technical translator I never really need long strings translated in that way. I just need to look up little terms from time to time.

The most annoying thing about it by far is that it has a really annoying pop up box telling you to click here and have license emailed to you. It also pops up over other windows when it's open, so for example as I'm writing this review with it open in another window the pop up is covering part of my screen! I find that extremely annoying and for that reason I've hardly ever used this software.

Translation Tools Review - Wakan Dictionary

2010-01-03T15:02:00.000-08:00

Just another quick review of a translation tool I sometimes use. This is another electronic dictionary which is available in both Chinese and Japanese. It's called Wakan and is widely available online if you do a search.

It's hard to talk about pluses and minuses of this dictionary. The main good points are that the system has slightly different definitions to my other dictionaries, so if I'm concerned about a particular term, I can always check it here and see what this has to say. In terms of features, there's nothing here I use that isn't available in any of the other dictionaries I've discussed, but then you don't really need anything other than the ability to enter a term and see the definitions. Certainly things like the stroke count and radical lookups in Wenlin are occasionally useful but really not essential.

The main problem with the dictionary is that it seems to require you to enter terms in pinyin rather than cutting and pasting Chinese characters into it. One of the reasons I might use a dictionary is if there is a term I have never seen before, and in those cases I can seldom guess the pronunciation. It just means I use another dictionary first.

All in all, it is nice to have more than just one dictionary, and although basic, these definitions seem to be OK, and can be helpful. In terms of features, it isn't strong enough to overtake any of the other commercial dictionaries as first choice, but is a nice addition. For some users, the Japanese functionality may also be useful.

Happy xmas

2009-12-28T14:23:00.000-08:00

Hi guys,

This is an informal post, just to wish a great xmas to all my readers and friends. In terms of translation I've come across quite a few interesting leads to write stories on, and I plan to get round to them soon.

In any case, let me wish you a happy and healthy xmas and new year.

David

Academic Degree Certificate

2009-09-27T08:53:00.000-07:00

There have been a tonne of academic degrees to translate recently. Over the past few weeks, most of my major clients have sent me at least one of two to translate.

Actually they are pretty easy to do once there's a template, and I'm thinking I could write a small software programme to actually translate them for me. So it would say "enter the date of birth stated on the certifiate", "enter the name of the university" and so on, then could produce a translated document based on that. There are quite a few different factors to take into account but it's definately doable. The question is whether the amount of time used in the programming would be made up with the translations.

I find the most time consuming things are translating the names of the universities (because I always have to check the offiical english name), and checking the president of the university who signs the certificate.

I guess I would just write something small to do it in something like access or maybe VBA or something like that? I could even programme it to produce my invoices etc.

Sounds like an interesting project when I've got some free time.

Timing of Translations

2009-08-21T02:08:00.000-07:00

There is some part of my body that makes me work slower the further I am away from a deadline or the more comfortable I am.

A job that really should have been an hour took two hours for the first section, and then as it was getting late, 20 minutes for the rest. I find I actually work best when it's getting late and I've got some kind of primal urge to do the job quickly and get home. I also find that the quality seems to be best at that time of night. During the day on the other hand, I find that I keep getting distracted and wanting to watch Youtube videos and so on. It means that sometimes when proof-reading, I notice that I had missed a whole paragraph or line.

This is a pretty well known phenomena I guess. I remember that my old manager at a bank I used to work for told me to always book meetings for 430 or later, because everyone will go there and get straight down to business, with no time wasting. It works every time!

I'm sure there's a science to work timing that could be extremely helpful.

Translation Tools - Wenlin Computer Dictionary

2009-08-16T11:29:00.000-07:00

The device I use the most when translating is probably Wenlin. It's basically a piece of software that works like a dictionary. There are some very strong advantages to Wenlin that make it ideal for translation, and for learning of Chinese. It's made as a general dictionary so it doens't help me translating technical Chinese but it's really good for more general documents.

Advantages:

You can search buy radical, number of strokes, pinyin, and character frequency. Another really useful feature is being able to look for a character by clicking on components and selecting "show characters containing this component". So for example you can get a list of all the characters containing "Cloud" by clicking on "cloud". It's really useful if you know part of a character but not the entire thing.

Disadvantages:

Some of the words are just wrong. It has "to censor" translated wongly as "to supervise" for exmaple in my version. There is also a serious lack of even very slightly technical terms, although it does OK with older Chinese.

Overall, it's a really great thing to have for anyone, but it's not cheap. The cost seems to vary depending on the reseller, but in Beijing I saw it for more than 1,000RMB. You can visit the website to read up no it. You can check out the details on their website: http://www.wenlin.com/

Paper Dictionary Review Part 2

2009-08-13T08:59:00.000-07:00

Another resource that I frequently use is:

中山　汉语医学词典　Yatsen Chinese-English Medical Dictionary published by 外语教学与研究出版社 in Beijing.

As a technical Chinese to English translator, I definitely need a medical dictionary. As far as I'm aware this is the only one still currently in print. By the way, if you're new to the area be aware! There are millions of English -Chinese dictionaries, but only a handful of Chinese - English. If you buy one on the internet always remember that YOUR mother tonge should be the second word. So I'm a native English speaker, translate into English, and thus use Chinese - English dictionaries. An English to Chinese translator would use English - Chinese.

The dictionary is sorted in order of pinyin. However, the pinyin of the characters isn't written. This can be a pain if you are looking for a word and open to a page where you don't know the pinyin for the first character you see. I think that this shows they obviously made the dictionary more for Chinese native speakers, as even for extremely skilled translators, it's a bit of a pain not to have the pinyin equivalents for the terms. It has the English phonetic pronunciation.

Advantages:

A clear and easy to read style with a pretty large font. There seems to be a pretty good range of words, and several terms that I've looked for have been in there. However, it's far from perfect and I've found some terms that I've never been able to confirm elsewhere.

Disadvantages:

No pinyin as I said above. It does have pinyin for the headings, but not for the actual terms. If they're needed for the headings then surely they're needed for the terms, and vice versa? Poor quality paper means it's easy to rip and spilled drinks make the pages totally unusable. Considering that the book is for people writing INTO English there is very little English. All the terms like "see page 8" are written entirely in Chinese, as are the foreward, and instructions for use etc. It's not a huge problem, but it would be helpful.

Translation Resources - Classified Encylopedic Dictionary

2009-08-09T05:32:00.000-07:00

From time to time, I plan to talk abut some of the paper resources I use for my translation.

One of the paper dictionaries I use most is a Taiwanese resource "Chinese-English Classified Encyclopedic Dictionary". It's published by "万人出版社" which is a Taiwanese publishing house.

This dictionary is divided into 20 sections, each of which is divided into many other sections (e.g Section 13 = science, part 1 = philosophy etc).

Advantages:

It has a really useful section on Industry which is perfect for scientific or technical Chinese to English translations. In particular, I often use part 5 of the industry section "Power" as I frequently translate power related things, other useful parts include Petroleum, Chemicals, and Metallurgy.

Disadvantages:

Each section only has 200 terms at most, so it is very unlikely that my exact term will be there. I can think of only one occasion where it has had the exact term I was looking for, from at least 100 uses. Another disadvantage is the complete lack of any kind of pinyin or bopomofo index, so you have to find terms by stroke order which I suspect most non-native Chinese speakers find difficult.

Overall:

It makes a good place to start, and can come in useful for a whole range of translation subjects. So it's certainly worth tracking down. However, there is no ISBN number and it was last published in 1996 so it is very hard to find. My copy cost 700NTD (which is around 10GBP or so).

Hilarious Translations

2009-08-08T08:45:00.000-07:00

I came across a translation that was obviously done by a non-native English speaker. These are usually a good source for laughs, and this was no exception. I wish I could post the whole thing but I don't want to break any confidentiality agreements with my clients.

Some funny things I've come across recently are:

a new staff member who uses the English name 'Dopey' - because he's her favorite dwarf!
A kind of candy with a caption "guaranteed oral pleasure"
"because of the economic crisis" translated as "because of MY economic crisis"
an angry text message which wanted to say "pay your rent!" but said in "to quick of payment for rent agreements pleases"

I could list more but it's almost too easy.

My next posts are going to be more technical and hopefully more instructional, as I'm going to try to turn this blog to a learning resource. So stay tuned!

Parameters and Coefficients

2009-07-22T08:20:00.000-07:00

I've discovered that there is one Chinese word which can mean in English - parameters and in other cases coefficients.

The Chinese word is 系数 (xi shu). It's extremely common in the kind of texts I work with. Particularly in physics or electronics and computing stuff.

You'll find a lot of websites with translations either way:

www.pinggu.org/bbs/b71i303671.html - uses parameter

dict.cnki.net/dict_source_d.aspx?searchword=coefficient&t=系数
- uses coefficient

So that leaves the translator with the problem of figuring out which is which from the context.

My first impression is that the English words are basically the same, but a dictionary search reveals:

Parameter (according to Princeton Dictionary)

a constant in the equation of a curve that can be varied to yield a family of similar curves
any factor that defines a system and determines (or limits) its performance
argument: (computer science) a reference or value that is passed to a function, procedure, subroutine, command, or program
a quantity (such as the mean or variance) that characterizes a statistical population and that can be estimated by calculations from sample data

Coefficient (according to the same source)

a constant number that serves as a measure of some property or characteristic

So obviously in computing, it is going to be parameter.

But both definitions are possible in Physics or maths stuff.

Sometimes there seems no way to be 100% sure. It's just a matter of educated guesses, dertermining things from context, and so on.

Exc ess Data

2009-07-16T10:30:00.000-07:00

I just completed a translation where in the source text, they had specified "taken into the stomach by the mouth". I originally translated it as "taken orally", but then I started wondering why they had specified "into the stomach".

So then I went backwards and forwards translating it as "taken orally into the stomach", "taken into the stomach" and so on. I wish I could have got in touch with the writer of the source text, but I couldn't.

In the end I decided to translate as "taken into the stomach orally".

I'm sure there is a lot that can be learned from that kind of problem. I guess if your source text is odd, then even the best translation will be odd.

Patent Translation

2009-07-14T12:06:00.000-07:00

Patent translation is an area that you could write millions of articles on. I'm currently working on a pretty technical patent, and it's making me think about the differences in format between the various nations.

Is there any reason why all patents in the world, couldn't follow a particular standard (section 1 = prior art, section 2 = content etc). It's so frustrating that the patents from the various Chinese speaking regions have different formats. So I can't just run it through my translation memory to save a bit of time.

On the other hand, the lack of any logical interaction gives me a way to show my skills to the client.

Proof-reading

2009-06-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

I was recently sent a "proof-reading" job. It was clearly translated by a terrible non-native English speaker translator, and was more or less unusable.

It's a scam that a lot of companies use. They hire a cheap translator to do the Chinese to English translation, and then expect the proofreader to "tidy it up" and make it sound right.

I've got a really hard line on those, where I simply refuse to do them.

Olifant Software

2009-06-21T12:57:00.000-07:00

I used a new type of software for the first time today. It's called Olifant software, and is available via free download. It's pretty nice. It lets you look in a TMX file, and change the data and tags etc. It's a small file and seems not to be as buggy as the bigger versions are.

I personally like to use small files, as they tend not to break down so much, and work a lot quicker. The menus are clear and clean, and because of the limited options its easy to use. I just figured it out right away without reading the manual at all! So if you need to edit TMX files, Olifant is worth a look.

You can read more about it here: okapi.sourceforge.net/Release/Olifant/Help

Friday Evening

2009-06-19T09:22:00.000-07:00

I get a good portion of my jobs on Friday evenings. I'm inclined to think it's a conspiracy of some kind, but then again I guess a lot of agents just work a bit harder on Fridays to clear their desks so they've got a nice easy morning on Monday.

I just opened my email and had three free samples, two proof-reading jobs, and a small translation all to be done before Monday!

That's my weekend sorted!!!

Job Lengths

2009-06-18T09:32:00.000-07:00

I've never done a full length book translation before, but it's something I'd really like to do. I figure that the pay would actually work out lower, but the schedule would be much more manageable. My longest ever single job was about 3 weeks. My jobs consist of about 50% minimum charge certificates and stuff, and the rest is shorter stuff. I find they tend to be about 1-4 pages.

I wonder if it's better to focus more on the shorter jobs, or to try and get hold of more longer term jobs.

In an ideal world, I think 10 minimum charge jobs per week, with one longer job or so per month would be perfect!

Working Long Hours

2009-04-27T07:48:00.000-07:00

Working really long hours takes a lot of discipline. While staying awake for so long isn't impossible, it is difficult to ensure high quality for really tight deadlines. In the past I've had to work for a full 20 hours before taking a rest.

I've got a few suggestions that might help people manage to work such long hours.

1. Sit comfortably.
This is obvious and there are lots of great videos on youtube and other websites to help. After working for a few hours it's tempting to squirm around in my chair, but I force myself to keep optimal posture. This seems to work, because I don't seem to get any back problems.

2. Eat heathily.
Don't go drinking sugary drinks to try to get through the night, it's better to keep taking vegetables and whole grains throughout the night. Although sugar gives a quick burst, it will dump you down much quicker after an hour or so. I like to quickly steam some broccoli or something like that. It takes literally 9 minutes, and I can eat and type at the same time.

3. Keep cool.
In a hot country, you may find that the room temperature seems to go up as your deadline approaches. I find that I like to keep the room at a slightly chilly temperature of around 22 - 24 to keep me going through the entire night.

4. Take frequent short breaks.
I usually take a few seconds after every sentence, and maybe stand up after every paragraph for around a minute. After about thirty minutes I go for a quick walk or do something like that for five minutes. I find that if I don't do that, my quality goes down and down as I continue to translate.

5. Don't work long hours!
Obviously the best solution is to plan more reasonable deadlines so you don't have to go through all that in the first place. I find I end up doing a long shift usually if another translator suddenly pulls out without notice, or there's a problem with proof-reading or something.

Those are some suggestions!
Take care,
David

Japanese Place Names in Chinese

2008-12-30T08:43:00.000-08:00

Quite some time ago, I was proofreading a Chinese technical document that had been translated into English. The translation was generally pretty good which was a real surprise.

I noticed that the translator had taken the names of some Japanese cities (which are normally written in Chinese characters anyway) and assumed they were cities in China. Chinese city names are usually translated just by writing the pinyin (alphabetic script) of the Chinese characters.

I only noticed because one of the listed cities was Osaka, and I am very familiar with that city in Chinese since I keep meaning to go there to work.

If I hadn't noticed Osaka I probably would also have approved of the other cities being translated just into the pinyin, luckily when I saw Osaka I did some searching and found that the other cities (towns) were also in Japan.

I guess the lesson there is to always do a search for place names, even if they look like they could be in China somewhere.

I also once worked with a terrible Taiwanese company (like most Taiwanese translation companies are). They had taken the names of some places in Argentina and just translated the names into Chinese pinyin. That's a different matter entirely.

Take care,
David

Christmas Holiday????

2008-12-25T07:08:00.000-08:00

Well, one of the things about being a translator, is that you have to be good at foreign languages, which normally means living abroad.

By now, I'm already used to having no kind of christmas holiday, today I'm trying to tidy up my accounts, and I still had to go to work.

Luckily I guess I'll get most of Chinese New Year off though.

I've actually found there seems to be slightly more work around than usual at the moment, I guess because no one else wants to do it. It would be interesting to see how a years work works out per month, I think I'm pretty evenly distributed throughout the year.

Happy christmas,
David

Collocations

2008-12-16T22:01:00.000-08:00

I just translated a document which had questions of the form:

how much does it prevent you:

prevents a lot
prevents a little

In Chinese this is perfectly OK, but obviously it's not appropriate in English. I normally just add a subject to the verb, so for example something like: prevents me a lot.

But sometimes you don't get the initial line in the text, so you just get given:

prevents a lot
prevents a little

Here you've no idea whether it refers to me, him, her or whatever. So in this case I would either change the form to a noun: very preventative, quite preventative. Or perhaps use a similar verb which does not require an object.

This is something which experience is helping me deal with much quicker. I remember in the past I would look at things like this for ages before I thought of a solution!

Problems Reading Chinese

2008-09-08T12:31:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a short trip to Thailand. Rather than risk loosing it, I decided to leave my laptop back at home. There are millions of internet cafes around Bangkok (by the way, if you do go, I recommend using the cafes outside Khao San or areas like that - in khao san you will pay way more than other areas).

Anyway a big problem always seems to be that different computer setups have different Chinese displays. So on some machines my Chinese emails appear as squiggles and on others they appear correctly.

The problems can range from the version and default settings of the internet explorer (which are easy enough to change manually - unless the machine uses a foreign interface in which case you won't be able to read the menu) to the operating system and installed fonts.

There are so many different factors that it's almost pot luck! What price unicode?

Why Technical Translators Might Hate Vista

2008-08-16T11:25:00.000-07:00

I can't speak for anyone else, but I strongly dislike windows vista. As a technical translator it is necessary for me to keep travelling and improving my language skills. In Taiwan, I decided I needed a new laptop so I bought a BENQ Joybook (a Taiwanese brand). The laptop came with the basic version of Vista.

So I take the laptop home, install everything, and try to change the language....

(yes I'm a Chinese to English translator but I prefer using the English interface)

...and what happens....error!

You can't change the language, you buy the machine in Taiwan, you have to use the Traditional Chinese interface.

It's totally unforgivable!
I HATE VISTA!

Dates!

2008-08-13T10:23:00.000-07:00

I've nearly been caught out twice when working with US based clients on dates. The US format for dates is month/day/year, whereas in the UK we use day/month/year.

Normally its not too much of a problem, but sometimes you just glance through and see that the first digit is a 9 for example and think, "OK it's the 8th today so they want to tomorrow".

In China they usually use year/month/day but often use the US format for English documentation. In HK they use the British format, and in Taiwan they use the US format or their own format.

The Taiwanese format starts with year 0 being the founding of the Republic of China (by Sun Yat-Sen). You have to subtract from the current year to get the Taiwanese year.

To solve the problem I always use the full written form for months "eg 2nd March 2006", and try to be extra careful when checking dates. Still I've almost been caught out twice.

To PhD or not to PhD

2008-08-12T13:04:00.000-07:00

I'm really keen at some point on doing a PhD. The problem is that the universities which offer PhDs in technical translation can be counted on the fingers of one hand. I would have to say that Imperial College (where I got my MSc) is probably the best available in the UK, but there's an interesting looking course at NYU. I don't fancy going through all the fuss of moving to the USA though.

There are lots of decent universities which offer degrees in translation (rather than technical translation). I guess in the UK Leeds, Swansea, Warwick, and Manchester would be good places. Obviously there is great range of courses out in Ireland (the Rio De Jeniro of localisation), but I'm not really sure I'd enjoy living in Dublin for 4 years. It would be frustrating to be in such familiar surroundings but being just a little too far away from my London based family and friends. Also I wouldn't be able to spend the time learning a foreign language.

Which makes some of the universities in Spain, France, and Germany look a good choice. At least I could be learning the language while I am there studying.

The other options are based in asia, mainly in HK (there are no PhD courses for FOREIGNERS in Taiwan yet). FJ Catholic university and Taishida both offer PhDs but not for "non-Taiwanese" which is both extremely annoying and borderline racist. Actually it's not for racist reasons but because of excessive paperwork, but it feels racist when you are getting turned away. I'd also add that neither of those universities have anything on their website saying "no whities" so I happily applied before being told! Grrrr!

Also I could move sideways into a more technical area. That's a a really attractive option, because I always enjoyed the technical side, and my working experience before translating was all technical. Cambridge offer a very attractive course (no doubt hard to get on), as do MIT (same again).

So I'm going to read very carefully through all the course information and apply for a few places for next year. If I get accepted I'll go, if not I won't have lost anything. Meanwhile I've got this year to keep translating and learning about the field, and hopefully the translation will be able to serve as my part time job if I start studying.

Translation Software

2008-08-10T03:21:00.000-07:00

I personally think that Trados made by SDL (sdl.com) is the best translation technology available. I'm trying to get used to OmegaT, which is a freeware version of Trados with quite a growing support base, but I'm just too used to using Trados.

But for both I find the same problem: support for Chinese to English isn't great.

I spoke to a Taiwanese translator, and he explained that he couldn't use Trados because it doesn't support using a Chinese interface, and he is a Japanese to Chinese translator and thus doesn't speak English.

That's not a big problem for me, because I'm quite happy with the English interface.

Generally speaking Trados seems to be extremely buggy when used with Chinese source texts. In addition to crashing for no good reason whenever it wants to, certain versions of Multiterm are unable to read Chinese characters (unless your default language is set to Chinese), and the alignment tool is not very useful since a single Chinese sentence rarely corresponds to a single English sentence.

There would be a whole range of features that would be useful for a Chinese to English translation tool, and in future posts I will talk about them.

Again, the opportunities for creating good quality tools for Chinese to English technical translation are massive.

Chinese Sentences Being Over-long

2008-08-09T13:35:00.000-07:00

I recently finished a translation of a guarantee handbook. As with documents of this type it was written in very polite, formal Chinese.

One problem which I find often comes up when translating things like that are sentences which literally translated would read as follows:

"if there are any problems with your vehicle, you should take your vehicle to the service centre immediately, so that they can look at your vehicle and make repairs, you should do this if there are any problems with your vehicle. "

That was my own made up example but it's pretty much what I often find.

Typically I would translate that sentence as something like the following:

"If there are any problems with your vehicle, please take it to the service centre immediately"

Unfortunately the project managers or clients always assume I'm being lazy and missing something, or that I've accidentally missed something, or that I'm just a scam artist.

I suppose it's because I was really moved by "Skopos" theory when I was doing my course. The skopos theory basically says that the information in the source text can be viewed as an offer of information, which I can choose to accept or not based on my knowledge of the target text and culture. Under that theory any target text would be a suitable translation, and comparing the texts side-by-side isn't necessarily a good way to judge the translation quality.

I find that the Skopos theory is just a great way to approach these kinds of translations, and frees me up from the "free versus literal" dichotomy.

I don't know what approach other people take towards these long sentences, but I'm beginning to find that Asian-based clients prefer to get something that they can compare phrase by phrase with the source text. I think it's quite sad because by doing that I believe they will always restrict the translator. European clients tend to be a lot more liberal, but perhaps that's because they don't have anyone who can check the source text!

I'll definitely write a lot more on this issue as it seems to be important, and I'm very interested in it!

Chinese to English Technical Translation Qualifications

2008-08-09T04:21:00.000-07:00

It seems that the majority of Chinese to English translators aren't very well qualified. A quick search through websites such as proz.com or translatorscafe.com both reveal that probably around 90% of Chinese to English technical translators hold no formal translation qualification.

However, there are some very qualified individuals. The best qualified I could find was a lady on translatorscafe.com who had several masters degrees and a PhD in translation.

With my Masters Degree I find myself highly qualified as a Chinese to English technical translator. However, does the qualification justify the expense of taking the course? Does it produce enough extra work to pay for itself? That remains to be seen, but I would say that I am very pessimistic about it.

David

Dictionaries

2008-08-07T06:34:00.000-07:00

One big problem doing Chinese to English is that there is a chronic lack of good quality resources. I read an article somewhere that said that the average Chinese to English dictionary is something like 15% accurate. That's a lot of bad terms.

One of my technical dictionaries had awful terms such as "unwatering" for "water extraction" and things like that.

Since we have to cope with these resources it's much harder to produce a decent translation. Don't even get me started on the accuracy of internet resources.

Last month I was given a job where the client supplied their own list of terminology and guess what - it was awful!

Having said that, this also seems to present an opportunity for making some useful tools and forming standards. A small company could never compete against Longman or Cobuild or any big dictionary companies like that, but for Chinese to English technical translation there still seems to be tonnes of space around.

David

A Common Terminology Problem

2008-08-06T11:28:00.000-07:00

I just finished doing a very tough patent.

One thing that I find often comes up in patents is the term "分别 fenbie = seperate" in Chinese.

Image you have a document which wants to get across the idea: "pin 1 goes through hole 1, pin 2 goes through hole 2 and pin 3 goes through hole 3"

Now in English we would probably write something like "pin 1, 2, and 3 go through holes 1, 2, and 3 respectively"

In Chinese however, they will use the word "seperate". So literally translated it would say "pin 1, 2, and 3 separately go through holes 1, 2 and 3"

It's very common to read people using the term "separately" in English, but it's absolutely wrong! In English both the word and the word-order are different.

David

Welcome!

2008-08-05T11:23:00.000-07:00

Welcome!

On this blog I'll try to talk about subjects relating to Chinese to English technical translation. I've got a lot of things to say on various aspects of the subject, and I'll try to keep updating at least once per week, hopefully 2 or 3 times.

I'm hoping that the process of writing the blogs will be useful for me, because having to write them will require me to take a critical look at my own thoughts.

I'll try to focus on a mixture of practical translation problems, problems with being a translator, ways to improve translation quality, get more work, work faster, and anything else.

I'll always be glad to talk to anyone who wants to drop me an email.

David