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!