No fair, faulting interpreters for eccentricity!

This morning’s fix of the world’s news included a story that bugged me. “spying case army interpreter was eccentric, colonel tells court, and several runs of kid-ferrying have helped clarify just why it is I found it troubling.

First, there’s the case of a newspaper reporting dog-bites-human as news. I mean, come on – has there ever been an interpreter who was NOT eccentric? I’ve seen interpreters whose dress code is “shock the PTA”, ones who have their in-office ashtrays organized with cigarette ends in neat rows and ashes in a pile, ones who interpret solely with their eyes closed (which gets quite unsettling outside of booth-work).

"His attire wasn't what I would normally have expected of a junior NCO," he said. "He had a very distinctive and odd sun hat with a cape down the back of his neck, and he wore slightly different boots.
"He was quite confident, not overly deferential, but nevertheless respectful. He just didn't behave in a way I would normally have assumed a regular corporal to behave."

Slightly different boots – now there’s something to be suspicious about! I’ll be his vocabulary was larger than the average junior NCO, too. And he probably actually spoke, rather than silently shining the perfectly standard boots of others.

It seems to me that in the current state of the world, interpreters are faced with more than the usual suspicion accorded the multilingual in monolingual cultures. And when slight differences are used for accusing, trying, convicting, and punishing people, we get witch hunts.

Interpreters and translators, who are inherently bi-cultural (at least!) and somewhat odd in their adherence to formal standards of language and grammar, may well be in danger of being played as scapegoats in monolingual societies with insular tendencies. The tides of insularity and conformity are rising.

I am scared.

XKCD tackles mistranslation

This is probably not safe for work (NSFW) - but you know, I've really had clients like this.

One for the heart, one for the soul, and one to keep you smiling

Lisa Hill Biales wrote Playing with Angels. I have yet to hear it all the way through without crying. If you’ve ever loved and lost – a dog, a child, a friend – it’s a comfort, in its own way. After you finish crying. It’s apparently available as a snippet – or for sale – on her PayPlay page.

For pure soul, there’s nothing quite a bright and shiny as Cary Tennis and what he’s doing on Salon. Did you ever read Ray Bradbury? He morphed from incredible ice cream suits, Martians and Halloween to being able to see the swan eaten by the dragon in ancient ladies and knowing that his father ties – he does not tie – his tie. His late father. And the readers of science fiction and fantasy went along for the ride, immersing themselves in some of the finest American writing ever to be committed to paper.
Well, Cary Tennis is doing something like that. He’s sort of an advice columnist – but he’s channeling directly from what matters in life. Check out his column today about how insight presents itself as uncomfortable rages breaking through that thin veneer of civilization. Pure gold, that is.

And for the smile on your face (and the translation link): Babylon was so aptly named! Now, I love it as much as anyone, but the monolingual Israeli parliamentary reporter who was about to receive an all expenses paid trip to the Netherlands really shouldn’t have used it to translate his questions to the Dutch Foreign Minister. Due to a great lack of vowels and common sense, every time the parliamentary reporter (dude named Eichler) meant to ask “if” (Hebrew: “im”) something was true, it was translated as “mother” (Hebrew: “em”); every time he wanted to ask about a “Persian threat” (Hebrew: “iyum Irani”) he got “terrible Persian” (Hebrew: “Irani ayom”).
I’ve sent it off to the ATA PR Committee, which will use it to help make the point that real-live translators cannot be replaced. Not even by terrible Persians.

Accountability, literary translators honored in Tehran (one alive, one not) and a phone-in service

Isn't human nature fascinating? Sam Wald, initiator of U.S.-based Fone-In telephone interpreting system company noted in his travels that a really useful service would be an on-call interpreter. What situation led him to that insight? A cab-driver who pretended not to understand the concept of "This price is too high." Um... when I was depending on public transportation, back in the big city, I had that same problem despite being entirely fluent in the local language. Good job on starting Fone-In, though...

Fuji-Xerox has come up with a nifty copier-translator, which marries the jollity of OCR with the merriment of machine translation. I don't know if it would work particularly well for actual translation, but comedy writers are bound to buy these in droves, if only to see what it does to their sketches. I took a quick look at their website... ...I have my suspicions about how they got their slogan.

Job opportunity! Apparently, Dubai has a shortage of Spanish-Arabic court interpreters. The Spanish Consul stepped in to do the job - but did not speak Arabic; only English. If you were a language school, wouldn't you want to film the little tag-team exercise in the courtroom for YOUR ads? People, Arabic translation is not just a growth industry, it is huge. Get to it, and make a difference. And your fortune. Probably in that order.

No jobs in Nogales, though. Apparently, the city of Nogales has decided to chop its own translator program right out of its budget books. I wonder which constitutional lawyer will argue their side of the due process case that is just bound to come out of this decision. Local writer William Wilczewski hears the wheels of justice screeching to halt over that decision, and shares that sound with us all. Thanks, WW! Justice is counting on folks like you!

Gosh, I'm glad I'm not working in Saipan! The Department of Labor ruled against including toilet cleaning in the Korean translator's job description. The Department of Labor hearing, heard by one Barry Hirshbein (tfui!) sputters that if any employee could leave their job just because of being asked to do work unrelated to the task then "any worker, who did not like the way that they were told to do their work, could leave their employer". I respectfully submit that Mr. Hirshbein needs to go clean some toilets right about now. What? Judges don't have to do that? They kind of have to, now that the translators have left! The moral of the story, though, is important for all translators: don't work for $7 an hour. If you sell your labor for that kind of money, it will be valued at that kind of level. (And can we have a consumer ban of the Saipan International School, please? I sure wouldn't want my kids to go anywhere near there!)


American attorney H. Candace Gorman sheds some light on the ugly doings by our government (I'm American, so it's mine too, alas) in the Guantánmo Bay prison camp for people the U.S. wants to disappear: "Under the protective order, when the meeting is over, I turn over my notes to the military escorts in a sealed envelope." - I wonder about the liability of translators knowingly translating material in direct opposition to attorney privilege. D'ya think that when this mess is swept up, they'll get swept up with it? I wouldn't touch that sort of thing wth a ten foot pole. Gorman says that ". I can no longer bring attorney-client letters to meetings if they are in Arabic, unless an Arabic translator reviews the letters first for information that he thinks I should not give to my client. I learned of the new rule when I went to my meeting with my usual stack of letters in English and Arabic. An Arabic translator was brought over to “review” my letters. He stood there and read the letters while I complained to the military attorney, who was busy ignoring the legal violation." Who are these translators, and why do they think they're protected by the military? I suspect it will be over its head trying to explain why the protections against committing war crimes have collapsed so spectacularly. Translators and interpreters will probably end up being entirely on our own when asked to be accountable for our actions.

Sadly, Iranian Children's literature translator Hossein Ebrahimi-Alvand has turned his last page. By the time he died he had translated more than 100 books, especially working for children and young adults. In a country with such a huge percentage of young people, the work of a translator focused on children's reading has an enormous effect.

Finally, and still in Tehran (funny how one really keeps an eye out for all things Iranian, these days): Iranian literary translator Reza Seyyed-Hosseini was honored for his fine work. Colleagues pointed out that he demonstrated that translators' golden triumvirate: attunement, good taste, and common sense. May these attributes rub off on all his colleagues, in all languages, everywhere!

Favorite illustrated kids' books - PSA

Possibly the most I-wanna-share-it-with-everyone post I've read this week is the Freakonomics blog post with the simple question: "What's your favorite kiddie book?"

Um, yeah. Munsch has major success there. Including (especially?) his Love You Forever, which I must now hurry out to buy in several copies for some young folk who have my love, forever, and need to know it in plain speak. But also all. those. others.

It's also a pretty good list of must-translate books, for publishers and publisher wannabes around the world. Many of these really do translate well. Some fortunes will be made by that link. And much joy will be added to the world.

I must somewhat grudgingly admit that the comment thread on that post pretty much justifies the whole phenomenon of blogging. Well done, Freakonomics.

Toss The Kitty – The Definitive Rules

Let’s get things clear at the outset: no cats are actually tossed in the game of Toss The Kitty. In fact, tossing a cat disqualifies both players for an entire week (for first offense), month (second), or for life.

With that out of the way, I propose a scoring system for the delightful (but sometimes intrusive) presence of the feline administrative assistant blessing your office.

The point of the game is to control the clear space between your keyboard and your screen. The cleaner and neater the desk is, the easier things are for the feline participant. Owing to the nature of the game (controlling space) and participants, it is something like playing Go with thumbtacks.

To start, begin working on a project. Your opponent’s goal is to occupy as much desk and screen space as possible. Yours is to keep this space clear and catless.
Cat gets one point for every time he (or she!) obstructs your vision or sits or stops moving on the game board. Cat gets five points for every time he sits or lies down on the board. You get one point every time you evict the feline contender from the space (nicely). Cat gets twenty-five points if he falls asleep on the board. Cat gets two points if you get up from your chair to provide him with treats, food, water, or toys (have them in your desk drawers before the game starts). You get five points for completing your work, time, or project with the board under your control.
Double the points for a rush-rate project, and during the last twenty minutes of available working time (before the kids get back from school, before a dentist appointment, etc.).

With love for Mikey, RedHat, and Cisco, my three winners.

Brain Silt, Brain Clearing

“How’s that empty inbox doing?” is a question that I have (surprisingly) not been asked. My friends and co-workers, who are used to my initial enthusiasm for tools and concepts and ideas and systems, have tended to back off and watch the tool-adoption process take its course.

Some tools seem like a great idea (low carb diets) but are too hard to implement (for a vegetarian) or lead to impermanent results (eat one cracker and gain all twenty pounds back). Some tools work beautifully (7 Habits) but lose efficacy over the long run. And some are fine (KeyNote. I *love* KeyNote) but aren’t contagious.

The big one I’ve been working at for the past couple of weeks is David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. It seems to come from a fairly simple set of suppositions: you can’t keep everything in your brain, because it silts up; you can’t afford to forget important things; thus, you’ll be in constant tension unless you find a good way to remember important things when and where they are necessary – a way that your brain trusts. And he proposes such a system.

I love it.

The tension of trying to balance a load of contradictory and important thoughts and projects and ideas and lists in one’s mind has been addressed by Robert Frost in his Armful. Frost’s solution, of course, is to restack the parcels. Allen’s solution is far more radical: he says we should drop and stash them, and create a reliable system of revisiting the dropped ideas. Reliable enough for the overwrought, overthought brain to be able to trust.

The geeks of the world have seized upon this system with delight. Not only can it be reduced to a three-letter acronym, the exuberantly joyous GTD, it can be hacked, sliced, changed, reviewed and in many ways, automated. Searching for GTD in the blogosphere brings up loads of good information and people grappling with the concept of dropping things out of one’s brain and checking up on them periodically (a weekly review is what the doctor orders).

Translators – often running small businesses, always fielding multiple requests – stand to benefit from the orderliness of the GTD system. We need our brains clear enough to be able to come up with just-the-right-word. Thousands of times a day.

Watch this space for some thoughts about negging (a courtship practice where the suitor obtains the attention of his quarry by insulting her publicly) in trade, commerce, and flamewars.

As to my inbox, which you were wondering about since the beginning of this post, it is still at zero, and now my desk is clean (clean! only a cat between me and my screen!) and so are the kitchen island and the kitchen table. Think I can keep this up?

Email is a killer app

Email is a killer app.
That used to mean an application that works so well that people get computers and internet connections in order to use it.

Now it means something more like this: “I spend so much time handling my email that I have far less time and attention available to work and play offscreen and offline”.

By its very compelling nature, email and the chance of getting some interesting, worthwhile, or fun messages works to undermine whatever boundaries you may have put up around your time. Much the way a ringing telephone is still seen as a compelling reason to stop a conversation, the knowledge that an inbox may have material in it is seen as a good reason to go and check it.

Again. And again. And again, and again, ignoring any plan you may have had for your own time because, hey, the inbox may have something inside it.

That’s a fine way to lose control of your time, but in terms of living a satisfying and effective life it seems like an all-drawback, no-benefit proposition.

But work comes in by email. So many translators manage todo lists, calendars, addresses, miscellaneous information by keeping them in our inboxes, which is where they came to in the first place. And since they’re there, we leave them there in the digital equivalent of a sort of searchable mind-dump. Sometimes we even have fabulous, color-coded schemes of message handling, with start and stripes and patriotic music (or just a different blip for every type of sender; you’ve gotta love Thunderbird… …it’s the ideal of any ol’ geek).

It’s still a mess. And since it’s a mess, we know that spending time on it will help. So we go back and spend, and spend, and spend… ….time, not money, but that’s a finite resource. Even you-know-who only has sixty minutes every hour. And I’ll bet he’s got a much better system for handling email.

And as of yesterday, I do, too.

For the first time since 1984 I have an empty inbox.

The zero inbox movement has intrigued me for a while. ‘How do they do it?’ I wondered. Battling inbox clutter has been a major part of my life for years. I used all the technology I knew, but I’d still end up with a few tasks to handle, a few social letters to respond to when I have time (more, I suppose, than the 24 hours allotted to me as a daily stipend) and a few pieces of urgent information.

Then I read Bit Literacy. In that slim book, Mark Hurst of Good Experience maps out another way of handling all the email. His company runs an online to-do list service which solved my first misuse of the inbox. All my tasks do, now, belong to me, and I can access them conveniently, email tasks to myself, email tasks to later dates (how cool is that?) so they won’t bug me when I’m trying to focus on today.

The question of handling social emails becomes obvious separate folders for “yet to answer” and “answered and done”. When I visit with my aunt I don’t want lots of stuff around me reminding me of work – and vice versa. Contact information goes into a contact management program. Lists and stuff to remember sit in KeyNote.

There is a place for everything, and everything is in its place.

And by golly, I’ve got clarity, focus, an empty inbox and control of my tasks.

Now I can take on the world.

What you don't learn at law school - continuing ed for laywers in a big good way

Off in Colorado lives and works a very cool lady, Nina Ivanichvili, who runs a fine translation establishment geared to the lawyerly crowd, All Language Alliance by name.

Working with lawyers has taught her some things; not least of which is that attorneys don’t typically get cross-cultural training at school. What with globalization, this becomes a handicap. How can they be trained?

Nina is not the sort of person who would shy away from a challenge. She has written an online Lawyer’s Guide to Cross-Cultural Depositions, and responses to it have been such that she has embarked on an ambitious new project: a blog for lawyers about translation.

Friends, translators, multiculturals – this blog is the cat's pyjamas, the bee's knees, and the owl’s unmentionables. It is a resource unlike any other, geared directly to the people who need it most. I won’t be surprised when this becomes required reading for advanced courses in international litigation.

Of course, there is a certain bunch of attorneys in Maryland which could have used Nina’s whitepaper. Everyone else is talking about it, so I won’t belabor the point. My favorite statement on the debacle and ways to prevent it was made jointly by the ATA and NAJIT, who have put together a resource for attorneys and court clerks, to help schedule interpreting in rare languages (also known as languages of limited diffusion).

This ties back in to Nina's blog and white paper. Any attorney dealing with a case that has multilingual implications should read these. Prosecution, as well as the defense.

Now all we need is a good language resource for judges. Anyone want to take on the challenge?

A call for submissions - loudspeaking for interpreters

Ethics I'm very clear about - both professional organizations I belong to have set out the rules, the ATA here and NAJIT there.

Morals, though, are a whole different ballgame.

Somewhere in the depths of my consciousness is buried the notion that writing for free is immoral - while client education is of the highest, sparkling-white morality.

Nataly Kelly's call for submissions for an anthology of interpreter stories causes me a bit of cognitive dissonance by falling simultaneously in both categories.

She is collecting stories and photos for a book about the wonders of interpreting; she correctly points out that in our work we live through wonderful storytelling material.

My inner balance tilts towards client education. Do send Nataly your stories, and check out her blog, too. I hope to write up one or two of my most sidesplitting experiences for her - who knows, maybe they'll get accepted!

The all-new website's up and running

...it's still pretty, and still green.

Take a look and leave a comment here!

A fascinating new blog

Take a look at Red Paw's pawmarks - I think this space is very worth watching.

Also worth watching, although not available digitally: my daughter's hands as she figures out knitting. Yes, spontaneous pediatric knitting activity is occurring in my kitchen, and when I see the dimpled hands of a nine year old tension the yarn in motions exactly like my own, I feel connected to the future.

More connected, alas, than to the past - I have no idea who taught me how to knit. It wasn't my mother (she knit English style, I knit German style). Probably a woman at a yarn shop in the small town where I grew up. She used patterns in Burda (in German) and had hennaed hair and not a lot of patience. But she *did* teach the eager 18-year old that I was how to knit, and I am grateful for that.

Rose says that means that the trick memory plays on me means I am an "orphan knitter", not organically connected to a lineage. That may as well be true - but I've adopted lineage from the teachers I've learned from, either in person (thanks Cat!) or via the printer's ink, which makes Elizabeth Zimmerman my knit-mother, as she is for so very many of us in the U.S.

There's a family of choice I can be proud of.

Somewhat groggy after alarums in the night
involving
a housecleaner with only a vague grasp of the airlock concept
three runaway cats
FOUR feline captures
and
one cat who smells quite clearly of
grease
I have to sign an email.

It pleases me.

Hence, this post.

אחת

אצבע אחת
נוגעת לאט
ואחת - לא רחוק -
מזדקרת;

אצבע אחת
לוטפת, צובעת -
לחות באוויר מתגברת;

אצבע אחת
חודרת, נבלעת,
מושכת -
הכל מתערפל;

הליטוף החטוף
ותנועת הריחוף
הופכים לשילוב
גוף בגוף, גוף בגוף

זה כבר לא יד לבד
זה כבר כל אברי
ואתה מסביבי
בתוכי, מלאכי,
נוגע, נבלע שוב, מביט בעיני -

והשמש כולה
היא חומרי תבערה
לתשוקה שנוסדה
על צורכי, צורכך
והים מתנפץ סביב אוזני בברכה:

כי אש החיים היא אישך
אשה.

NPR gets it...

In a story called Underdogs of War, NPR's Marketplace tells it like it is for the Iraqi interpreters, whose choice to work with our military ends up being more than just a little expensive.

The role of a cross-cultural bridge can have a very steep price in war, when bridges are seen not as helpful transportation devices but as strategic targets.

Let's hear it for the invisible leftovers!

I came across the following is from the Seattle Times:

As kitchens evolve into entertainment centers, no self-respecting host wants guests to see yesterday's leftovers during trips to the fridge.

Words of such stupidity need to be celebrated! OK, WHO IS THE IDIOT WHO FEELS THAT LETTING GUESTS ***SEE*** LEFTOVERS WHEN OPENING UP THE FRIDGE IS A ***PROBLEM***??? And where did AP writer David Bradley come across this idiot? And why is he perpetuating this attitude?

Bradley's a good guy. I actually went and read a few other articles by him, and he's just the sort of home and garden guy I like reading. Here's a shout out to him: y'know, Dave? Leftovers are something proud of. Shame is not a good motivator. Shame of leftovers doubly so.

Buying the nifty under-the-counter fridges would work way better because I want 'em than because they'd spare me the horror of having visible leftovers...

The Great Port Townsend Dog Wapping

I was not actually a witness to the wapping of Port Townsend’s canine population. I had been to Seattle that day, trying to convince translators that right to left languages are a breed apart and really do need other software. This trip was made possible by asking in Sheri-the-wonder-sitter, to look after my tiny Rose. I only heard about the wapping the next day.
Actually, there was a hint of something having done amiss in Shar’s report, that night: “Rozz got loose and ran down to the waterfront; we looked for her all over and only found her after the sun set. She was swimming in the bay with all the dogs.”
“She did?!? She was?!?”
“Yes – oh, not Rose! it was Rozz, my dog,” she explained.
Whew.
The next morning, after giving the toddlerette her share of guilt-reducing mama’s-been-away gifts, I inquired after the main figure of her exciting day. “Did you have fun looking for Rozz, sweetie?”
“Oh, yes, Mama! She was wapping!” exclaimed my little flower, baby-blues agog with delight.
Our household is far more multi-lingual than I am, so I went over to dad’s study, to ask if Dutch dogs wap, and how they do so.

“No, I can’t say that they do,” said the man I’d married. “They waf, sort of, or vuhff, you’d call it.”
Back to the kid, to inquire. “Rosie-pie, can you tell me what you meant, when you said that Rozz was wapping?”
Heaven hath no angel sweeter than my round-faced little one. She looked up from her coloring project with an incredulous look. Mama was being dense again, it seemed. “Rozz was wapping!” she insisted.
“But,” I persisted, “what exactly was she doing?”
She picked up a purple color.
“No, really, sweetie; did she wap with her mouth?”
“No, Mama.”
“Ok, did she wap with her paws?”
“She was wapping with the other dogs, mama,” she said, with a somewhat condescending tone. It had taken me a while to figure out that the schhhhadyou was just a shadow in Dutch, so she already knew I was a bit slow.
“Did the dogs wap together, honey?”
“They was wapping, mama!”
“Did they wap in the water?” I saw the look in her eyes and dropped the notion. Wapping was a land-based activity. “Do they wap with their leashes around a tree?” Nope. No leashes. Which was how Rozz got away from Sheri and set out on the wap path in the first place.
I tried another tack. “Rose-toes, can you tell me where she was wapping? Was she wapping on the beach?”
There’s a sort of desperation that creeps into a mother’s voice, when she’s doing her best to use a word that she hasn’t quite fathomed nonchalantly, as if it were hers to begin with. Rose picked up on it right away. “Mama, Rozz was wapping, by the water, with the dogs,” she intoned. Her emphases were as clear as her patience. Mama may be a bit slow, but has been known to be useful. “She had a red scarf.”

Rozz is a black mostly-Labrador, not given to fashion accessories.
I tried to act out a good doggie wap. “Did she wap like this?” I asked, on all fours. Not. “Or like this?” I rolled over and imitated a dog-on-rug backscratching session. No, not that either. “Can you show me how she wapped?”
But enough had been, apparently, enough. Rose has been careful not to use complicated words around me, although she did tell her dad that “Rozz and the other dogs were really wapping.” But she had to make sure I wasn’t around to witness this confidence. He didn’t think it was crucial. “Next time she sees a dog wap, she’ll show us; she’s considerate, she likes teaching us,” he reassured me.
I hope so. Next time, I want to see it, too. Because I couldn’t help asking her, the other day, whether all the dogs wapped or only Rozz, and if I’m to believe my informant, they were all wapping, in plain view of Water Street traffic.
And wouldn’t you know it? They picked a day I was out of town to do it, too.

The U.S. Government Loses Credibility

According to a news story discussed on Slashdot, our government, in its wisdom, has put Iraqi documents on the Web, with the goal of speeding up translation.

Hello? Do you think that just-maybe-possibly this is the best opportunity yet for misinformation campaigns? Mistranslation or "nothing interesting here, move to the next document" statements could cover up real intelligence and gum up the works in a huge way.

Newsflash for my government: hire people. Pay them market rates. They'll do the work you want. But don't just rely on volunteer translators - would you rely on volunteer bridge-builders? Customs officers? Physicians? If not, don't trust MY security to "volunteer translators".

Harrumph!

Yaoza! And the occasional world leader who REALLY neads a kindergaden teacher

Look up! It’s a bird! It’s a plan! It’s Yao and his interpreter! Although this review considers him to be a translator, we all know the truth. The movie, The Year of the Yao tells the story of the first China-born athlete to make the NBA. And since he can’t speak English, guess who enjoys a star position? You’re right, a good ol’ fashioned interpreter, that’s who. The story of Colin Pine – and Yao Ming, of course – makes interpreting history, I believe. I hope my local library picks up a copy.

Looking for tips on how not to do your job? BBC’s Gavin Ensler has a clue. Faced with a world leader who wouldn’t stop talking, and an interpreter who filled in all the rest of the time, Ensler stumbled across the difficult issue of client education. Interpreters have to tell their clients the rules: first you talk, then I talk, then he talks, then I talk. Take turns. You’d think World Leaders would have learned that in kindergarten! I know for sure that Julie Ann taught my little Rose all about that before switching careers and going into real estate sales. Rose is now definitely ready to be a world leader. Maybe when she’s done selling, she’ll give a Manners for Monarchs course?

Over in the Dominican Republic, they seem to have an interpreter shortage and had to rely on the services of Dominican councilman in New York, Miguel Martinez, to make heads or tails of a donation service. Psst! Check out your local covered market for interpreters. No scabbing by politicians!

Whatever you do, don’t work with the creeps in translators clothing described in this tale of U.S. torture in Iraq. I don’t care how bad the person is, if we use torture, we’ve lost our own ethics, morals, integrity, and raison d’être. No, raison d'état does not fly here. We’re bigger than that.

That’s what I’d like to think, anyhow. Of course, I may be too literalist when I interpret the constitution and those amendments it’s got tacked onto it. But then, I come from a long line of literalist interpreters...

Catch y’all tomorrow. Be good!

Illegal Translating, Interpreting to Death, and Enough being Enough - Monday Grab-bag

Gosh, I love the blogosphere! Remember Of Rice and Men, comedic treatment of a not-quite-prepared-enough interpreter in Vietnam? I blogged about it last week. Well, author Richard Galli, already picked up on it and shared a few passages from the book (go see, it’s right here).

Another reason to love the this-here-sphere: lower-case susan is right back in it. I’ve been reading her (and writing to her) since the mid-nineties, mostly on Lantra (and profuse instant messaging conversations into the night). Now the rest of the world can enjoy. Go give her a hug from me, willya?

And yet another: it makes daydreams come true! Last week I was kidding around about waving a pen translator at signs to find the rest rooms in a foreign country. Alex Waibel to the rescue! 3,000 Chinese characters are stored in a device that integrates a camera and some translation memory. Idioms will still pose hurdles, though...

In a more ambitious project, the U.S. military has put DARPA on the tail of truly automatic translation. Allow me some skepticism – is that mountain pictured in the report the tower of Babel? Or Sisyphus’ office space?

Over in Iran, we hear a blow for the first amendment: poetry by Parvin Etesami will be translated from Farsi into English by Iranian poet Mehdi Afshar . What with this activity being illegal in the U.S., Mehdi’s work is doubly welcome. It is a sad day in the U.S. when translating poetry is considered seditious. That’s not the saddest thing around (that would involve all the children killed directly by U.S. policies) or even the second saddest, but it’s a good thing to pay attention to before other activities go illegal on us.

At least in the U.S. the wages of our work couldn’t get much worse than a half-million dollar fine and ten years in prison. Our colleagues in Iraq are being routinely shot dead. Interpreting for the American forces, NGOs, and journalists would seem to be a very bad career move for those of us who want to make it to our next birthdays.

But it’s not just shooting that gets at us. Much of what Kurt Williams points out about developers in start-ups is true for self-employed translators. We tend to borrow from Peter’s hours to give Paul’s project some extra minutes, and the person who’s short-changed is the one at the keyboard. My solution for this involves long walks, a bit of yoga (I should really do more) and forcing myself to avoid night work despite the temptation. This has turned out to be a healthy practice both for my body and my business, as it has led to the realization of what is, in fact, enough work – and what is way too much.
Now’s a good time to work, though. Over and out (until I’m paged for a walk with HikerDude!)

First I laugh, then I cry: websurfing for catharsis

Ow! Ow! My sides hurt! Someone (which is not, HikerDude wishes me to clarify, the same person as HikerDude. Someone is someone else and not the person you may think it is; in fact, Someone specifically forbids us all to think of themselves.) has been roaming the blogosphere and finding yummy tidbits. Such as this delightful array of culinary possibilities found on the menu of an Asian restaurant could not be the result of a machine translation. Machine translations may be idiom-blind, but they are at least consistent.

Oh, the verbs on this menu; oh, the mountains of food offered. Literally: “Good to eat mountain, 18 yuan”. Jon Rahoi may not have been quite that hungry, but I’ve got a teen with a hollow leg to feed. I wonder if they produce a cookbook... ...perhaps all the extra Internet publicity will let this fine establishment hire a translator, instead of playing with the Verbs And Ingredients refrigerator magnet set they seem to have used along with a twelve-sided and chisel to create their piece of art.

Menus like this – or not quite exactly like this, because this one is rather extreme, but you know, menus aspiring to this - are a very good reason to keep translators’ meet-ups confined to homes and parks. If there’s anything a group of translators can proofread, they’ll do THAT before ordering, and if you’ve planned on eating at the meet-up, you’ll end up hungry.

But if only one (or two) translators meet at a restaurant like that, it’s not just a great time to use their phonecam; it’s a business opportunity. “I’ll trade you an actual translation for a meal” is an acceptable proposition. And menus change all the time. It is such a pity that I can’t pull that off in my home town.

I’m not sure that the same strategy could be applied to Jon Rahoi’s latest post, where he remarks that This stuff reads like they're inventing English, not learning it. We need a massive airlift of retrofitted Speak N Spells dropped over Asia. How about starting with a massive reeducation on the value of professional translation? And editing?

Translation is not required for the Japanese TV spots on housekeeping you’ll find behind the link. In it, you can learn how to stop a baby from crying by blowing Japanese text at it, how to peel a potato, and how to fry onions into a golden paste. Oh, yeah, and a slower version of that shirt-folding video. Someone and I have perfected our technique by now.

Last but not least, under the general category of “job openings that seem least likely to generate good feelings for interpreters”, Australia tells Moslems to preach in English or hire translators. I find this offensive in a bunch of ways, not least of which being professional outrage: so, the Australian government wants to allocate language resources for religious applications, and urges residents of that country to “be more Australian”, with their religious worship first? Gosh, y’guyz! Haven’t any books about the consequences of religious persecution hit the down under?

That’s all for today. I’ll go stomp around the block and maybe the bad taste (pun intended) from Oz will go away.

Sacagawea, Wyoming, and Rye

90% of blogging is showing up on the page, right? Well, let’s mark this weekend as a complete blog-failure and start the week with a nice round-up of news. But happily, translators and interpreters have been making headlines even while I couldn’t make it to my desk, so we’ve got a pile of things to think about.

For instance, France. We all like thinking about France, don’t we? HikerDude and Susan each pointed me at the fact that a Versailles court imposed a large fine on GE Medical Systems under the Toubon law. The company has three month to translate all past documents, and other multinationals are expected to scramble for translators. Happily, English into French is a fairly common combination. I’d hate to think of the impact of that sort of ruling on a rarer language!

The Daily India engages in some client education and discusses the multilingual environment in that great country. I love the first question they set: “Is the translator capable?” – that’s an important issue, because anyone can hang out their shingle as translators. And some of us are rather more professional and – well, capable – than others, as any project manager will tell you.

Hospital interpreting is making news in Wyoming, where a combination of trained community interpreters, such as Louisa Garcia, and a phone interpreting service offered by AT&T make it possible to communicate with patients for whom English is not a comfortable medium. I’m a bit miffed at the phrasing of the article, though. The reporter said that “The phone is an important tool for the hospital, but whenever possible, real people are brought in.” – Do they think the phone interpreters aren’t real? – but other than that small quibble, I’m delighted to see that at least in that Wyoming, a lack language skills won’t be a death sentence.

The phone interpreting solution has also made it to Kansas City, where the police tip line (a.k.a. TIPS) now accepts leads in all languages. Go, Kansas City!

In Rye, New York, one stop away from my most-visited-in-the-U.S. train station, there is an interesting need for interpreters who speak Romanian and Georgian (not the Southern Dialect characterized by a hospitable attitude and very sweet tea, the one from the Republic of Georgia). There are two sixth graders who’ll be needing help on a math test. I’m glad they’re not using the parents, and indeed, hiring interpreters is better than forcing the parents into the classroom. I wonder how this ad hit the papers, though. I didn’t see any district-hired Spanish interpreters helping out my daughter’s classmate last year... ...let’s just file it under things that make me go hmmm.

Last for today, a colleague of ours is honored as part of the Women’s History Month. Mentioning Sacagawea always makes me wonder about just how consensual her interpretation gig with Lewis and Clark was. The importance of her role is in no doubt, though, and women have been making do with whatever situations we are dealt since, well, since forever. Sacagawea, at least, gets honor and acclaim for it, and that’s a good thing in herstory.

Having alienated half of the human race with the last word in the previous sentence, I’ll sign off for today. Be good; consult your dictionaries; and stop by here for another entry tomorrow...

Edited to add: Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Someone sent me this link to a short but sweet video of how to fold a shirt. Later, Someone and I spent several minutes trying to do so. I think we need a translation!

Wordwidgets and the things translators do beyond the call of duty

There is a logical fallacy which I’ve noticed in my thinking. Namely, “people like us don’t do that kind of stupid thing”. I’ve engaged in it in many parts of my life: people in my family don’t do stupid things (wrong!), people in my language-group don’t do stupid things (I speak English. Wanna talk empires and oppression, anyone? English is not, in general, the language of saints and the morally superior...), and finally, the astounding error of thought which I had sort of left in the unarticulated notion “language professionals don’t do that kind of stupid thing”.

Page Plato, we’ve got a new philosophical realization here. Yes, indeedy, language professionals can and do incredibly stupid things. Sometimes to the point of being Darwin Award-worthy, but on a more frequent, daily basis, I’m talking about smaller things. Like the idiots who specifically and vociferously demand literal “word for word, do you understand?” translation of copywriting and then complain about its sounding horrible in the target language (an issue that came up not once but twice yesterday). Makes you want to shake the culprit and maybe dislodge the stupid ideas from their brain – copywriting cannot be translated literally. It just. Does. Not. Work. How come language professionals – project managers, for example – fail to know this?

But this morning’s grumble-grumble-grumble belies my big happy smile. A chronic condition has been cleared up, around here. To wit: some people have lice; some people have leprosy. For a very long time, we had contractors. Now we have a nice, new, functional bathroom, at twice the price and six times the estimated length of the project.

All phases of this project reminded me of translation projects. The bid, the way things got more complicated once they tore out the floor (gosh-golly, guyz, that’s pretty much the reason I like being a translator rather than a contractor. I’d hate to have to spend most of my time in places with no floor). But I wonder, how long would I stay in the market if I were charging double the original quote and taking six times as long to deliver? And why did I put up with it?

I’m trying to figure the answers out myself.

Meanwhile, other people are putting their time and experience to better use: Norah Bagarinka, Rwanda massacre survivor, did what we all do and went above and beyond the call of her duty as official translator for the movie God Sleeps in Rwanda, an Academy Award nominee for best documentary short. But she didn’t just translate –co-director Kimberlee Acquaro explained that her role grew far beyond her original brief to being a major part of the in-country production team. That keeps happening, of course. Translators are people who need to know a lot about a lot of things, and our talents are often recruited for all those various extras.

What seems to be a daily offering – the wordwidget du jour is a pen scanner with translation capabilities has made it to the market. You point the pen to the word, run it along it, side to side and presto, there’s your translation, right on the LED. This may be a bit harder when trying to read signs in foreign countries, and outright dangerous for translations where context is key like pharmaceutical inserts and such. But hey, nice widget and I wouldn’t mind getting one for Christmas. In fact, any pens are welcome - the half-life of a pen-purchase is numbered in days, here, so I'm giving the twenty-four new ones we bought this morning about a week and a half. Then I'll go raid you-know-who's office.

Over in the U.K., the Independent foreign fiction prize honors superior literary efforts that need the help of literary translators to make to the English press. To emphasize the fact that this help is a need, the prize money – £10,000 – is shared equally between writer and translator. In the running this year – mainly works from Eastern Europe. The prize will be awarded in May - I’ll be on the lookout for it and when I find out, I’ll share. Meanwhile, pick up the short list here - maybe your local library has ‘em?

Dismal times for the linguistically disadvantaged of New York: the medical situation is bad enough, but how come you’re using a waiter as your interpreter, docs? Read it and weep. As HikerDude commented the other day, our medical issues may be irritating, but at least we can get the information. Petition your local hospitals to use interpreters, and phone interpretation services. Really, do. Slamming against a language barrier should never kill anyone.

It’s back to the salt mines for me – work is piling up, as are administratrivialities. I’ll be back at the blog tomorrow with an essay on Islam, on Sunday with some other musings relating to – oh, I dunno – and on Monday with the news roundups: the world through, with, by, and for translators.

Our General Store Has A Little Of Everything

HikerDude pointed out yesterday about how it is that translators always get the blame, even in situation such as a mixed up sign in a monolingual environment, which has absolutely, truly, wholly not one single thing to do with translation. That convenient catch phrase, "lost in translation", taints our profession with a continuous mental link with loss. This calls for a button, and some copywriting. Something like “gained in translation”, but with more spin and twist. Ideas, anyone? Mail ‘em direct or leave a comment. I’ll post a round-up once we’ve got a few.

Community interpreting with red suspenders: how come Del Rio Texas is relying on firefighters as interpreters? Are they trained for that? Do they know the rules? In a bilingual environment such as Texas, they’ve got to fund another way – or pay the penalty of unclear information.

Here’s a good one from Bangladesh, a caution to our colleagues: “Friends don’t let friends aid terrorists”, is that clear? Apparently, Shaikh Abdur Rahman didn’t have friends who knew that. After returning from travels around the Moslem world, “Rahman took up a job as a translator of Arabic travel documents for Bangladeshi workers going to the Middle East, but intelligence sources said the occupation was a cover”. But take that with a grain of salt, folks, because ANYONE who can speak the language of those other folks (whoever they may be; it used to be Germans and Japanese, but the fashion’s changed now) is a potential suspect. Even people arrested in Bangaldesh are considered innocent until proven guilty.

Moving right along, I foresee loads of work coming at us when people who built their sites with Apollo Hosting realize that automatic machine translation, without the blessing of a human who actually speaks the language, may end up with them trying to say “out of sight, out of mind” and ending up with “invisible idiot”. There’s a marketing niche there, somewhere – offering a bundled website translation to hosting companies. It’s not something I’d want to do, but hey, go for it. Just tell ‘em you heard it from Shunra.

Following up on yesterday’s healthcare message, I thought it was important to not that no, it is not surgery required because of violence I inflicted on pen-stealers. Thanks for asking and I’m glad I could make this public clarification. I caught the infamous team at it again in the evening, though. I think I’ll go down to Swain’s General Store and pick up a box or two of new ones. Wouldn’t it just be easier to write it on the shopping list, guyz?

Finally, a pet software peeve – am I the only translator who gets the violent shakes when waiting for Adobe Acrobat Reader to get all its ducks in a row and open already?

I’ll be back tomorrow with a brand new round-up and I won’t even mention politics a teeny little bit. Or at least, I’ll try. Till then!

The healthcare debate, pen thieves, and a little translator round-up

The things a translator has to do to get her day started.

Any readers outside of the U.S. would have a hard time believing this, but my morning was spent trying to figure out health insurance. Any readers inside the U.S. would find it difficult to believe that I got my answers so fast – but I did, indeed, get them all within a phone call. And the answers are not pretty. Yeah, a member of my family can have needed surgery – but the (outrageous) costs will be 20% out of pocket AFTER we hit the (quite high) annual deductible.

And we’re the lucky ones: we’re insured. Forty-five million Americans are not; they’d have to pay 100% of the cost, or more likely, go without.

What does that have to do with translation? Did I use “French” that needed to be excused to the nice lady at the insurer’s office? No, I’m a mild mannered sort of person. This has to do with translation because many if not most of language professionals (translators, interpreters, writers, editors) in the U.S. are self-employed, which means that they’re in the same boat as we are. Self-employed? Stay healthy, or you can join in the bankruptcy fun – health-care expenses are, in fact the leading cost of bankruptcy in the U.S. Malcolm Gladwell discusses this in some detail in an excellent article in the New Yorker. Interestingly, he reverses a position he held on the subject several years ago. Read about it, pass it on, VOTE ON IT, guyz. ‘Cause the human body comes without a warranty.

We can tie that in to translation using the Olympics, which will soon – I hope! – fade out of the headlines. But it’s still there, this time with the story of one Dr. Frank Nisenfeld, an orthopedic surgeon in Frederick, spent two weeks at the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, working at a clinic in the Olympic Village. But was the medical work the most rewarding? Not at all. Apparently, “serving as a translator was one of the most helpful things he did. "I felt more useful as a translator than as an orthopedic surgeon." Does this surprise your news trawler? Not at all. If you can’t find out “What hurts? How bad is it? Was it ever broken before? How many fingers?” – how are you going to practice medicine? Like most human ventures, medicine is about communication. And this means that in multilingual environments, interpreting is as healing as doctoring. Thanks for noticing, Dr. Nisenfeld (and glad you liked the Olympics)!

In terms of things that make you go “hmmmm...” file the story of one of Yale’s newest freshment. Admissions must be pretty desperate, wouldn’t you say, if they accept a former Taliban leader, who had risen to power from his position as translator (which is how I happened to notice this story in the first place)? Didn’t this guy have to check the box that says “have you ever been a terrorist” when landing in the U.S.? Or maybe the Taliban were not, in fact, terrorists? I guess a terrorist is what our Department of Homeland Security (gosh, what a name) think a terrorist is, and that’s all there is to it.

Speaking of all there is to it, I’d like to take an informal poll: anyone around here have strong opinions about their spouse coming into their office and stealing pens from their desk? How about the spouses who know that such behavior is unacceptable and bribe your children to do it for them? Not that such a thing could happen in Port Townsend, no way. We’re all waaaaAaaay too civilized to do that here in hippieville.

Or that’s what I’d have thought until I caught them red-handed (and, I might add, pink-inked).

I’ll go translate something that doesn’t need pink ink. Catch you tomorrow about this time with a new round-up of things linguistic.