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10 Questions Your TSP Doesn't Want You to Ask
Often, there is an imbalance between what translation service providers ("TSPs") know about translating, and what the client knows. In short, the TSP is the expert in that area and the client is...
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Understanding Translation Paradigms
I think that it is important to understand first of all that there are translation paradigms, and also to understand what they are, and why we translators should understand them.As I explain below,...
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Translation Paradigms, Part II
I began blogging yesterday about translation paradigms (models). I feel that knowing the paradigms and that there is not just one way to translate frees translators, makes them less stressed and afraid...
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"Perfect" Translation
I was blogging yesterday about the idea of paradigms or models of translation. The basic notion is that there are about 4 major translation paradigms (equivalance, Skopos, functionalism, etc.) and many...
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Dan Gouadec's Job Specification Approach to Translation
Following up on my posts last week on translation paradigms, one that I particularly like is French translation theorist Dan Gouadec's job specification translation paradigm.To make a long-story short,...
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"Your Translation is Better Than My Original"
We translators are a pretty picky bunch, and we often blog about and talk about clients who are difficult and who send work back with negative comments. It happens to everyone. If you understand...
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Where Should Your Translator Live ?
I have been thinking about a subject that probably most clients don't consider when hiring a translator: where the translator lives.Let's say you have a German to English translation. Do you want your...
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Book Review: "Why Translation Matters"
Edith GrossmanI just finished reading Edith Grossman's book "Why Translation Matters". Grossman is a major literary translator, and translated Cervantes from Spanish into English. Her book is short...
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Functional Translation
I have blogged recently on how there is no such thing as "perfect" translation. Just as there is no such thing as the perfect painting or novel, there is no such thing as "perfect" translation.But...
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"Translators Must Sit on Two Stools"
In his book, "Verstehen und Übersetzen", Dr. Paul Kußmaul mentions that translators do more than just de-code an re-code words (as is naively believed by people who don't fully understand what...
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Scenes and Frames
Charles Fillmore (1977) developed a linguistic theory that he referred to as scenes and frames semantics. This concept seems a bit abstract at first, but I think is very helpful to translators and to...
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Thoughts on Editing
Editing is of course a big part of what we do as writers and translators. We all should edit our own work, including when we write e-mail (one reason I blog is to constantly work on my English and my...
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Critiquing a High-End Ad Text
I like to think of translation as copywriting, because it is. If I have a job to translate a German advertising text into English for a "glossy magazine" (a high-end magazine), I am in effect a...
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Semantic vs. Communicative Translation
I tend to think of translation theory as not divorced from translation practice. It is the same as if you learn how to play chess or golf. How can you separate the theory from the practice ?So when I...
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The Third Wave in Translation
I liked to read the Alvin Toffler books about the future back in the 1980s. He made reference to a "third wave". In Toffler's view, these waves were:1. The agrarian / feudal world2. The world of mass...
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How to Slash Your Translation Costs
We are living through tough times. The EU is in permanent crisis, and America is in debt, and in a deep recession. Many companies understandably want to save cost on translation.Here is my 7-step plan...
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"The Culture Code"
One of the most fascinating books I have read in the past three or four years is Clotaire Rapaille's "The Culture Code". The book is by a Frenchman turned American, who is an anthropologist and...
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Does Font Matter ?
Some of us might believe that font is a totally subjective choice. Let's face it, some fonts look good to some, and some fonts look bad to some. Some people (Apple computers) like Helvetica. Some...
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What is Localization ?
Do you know what localization is ? If so, you can probably stop reading, right now. If not, you might want to continue.A lot of people think that localization is just a fancy name for translation, but...
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There Are Many Translation Markets
One thing that I think there is a lot of confusion on is the notion that there is only one translation market. It is untrue. There are many.I was watching an interesting video on the Internet about...
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The Price of Sub-Par Translation
I blogged recently on how there are various differing translation markets, from free to high-end. So why is it that some companies are willing to pay top dollar (or euro) for good translation ?Well,...
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Foreignization, Exoticism, and Calque
I have been reading the English translation of Stieg Larsson's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". This past weekend was rainy and cold, and I thought it would be a good chance to dive into a...
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What Translation Clients can Learn from Dead Squirrels
Neil Baron had an essay recently at "Fast Company" on premium pricing (http://www.fastcompany.com/3000999/what-dead-squirrel-taught-me-about-premium-pricing).In the essay, he describes having a dead...
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100 Facts about Translation
100 Facts about Translation1. Translation is all around us. We translate things constantly ("I had to translate what she said", or "I had to translate his facial expression").2. There are 330,000...
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The Red Line Test and Translation Quality
Chris Durban had a short piece that I ran into on the Internet about what it takes to create translation at the highest level of quality. This is "for publication" translation.So how does "for...
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