Transatlantic Relations in the New Decade

Hello again...

I wanted to post something about a very interesting speech that I was able to attend last Friday (12 November). I attended a discussion with the German Ambassador to the US, Dr. Klaus Scharioth (here is a link with a brief synopsis:  http://www.ceuce.com/features/diplomacy.html, and a picture of him in the White House).


His topic was simply "Transatlantic Relations in the New Decade", and in it he basically outlined the 10 most important issues in German-American relations.  It was mostly appealing to my "inner political scientist", but he did touch on one very important language issue toward the end.  This was the issue of language and immigration, something that we also face here in America.  It has been a hot topic in Germany lately, with Chancellor Merkel recently commenting that "multiculturalism has failed in Germany".  She was basically referring to the fact that the German government's policy of integrating Turkish (and other) immigrants has not been successful.  Their new policy is going to be to provide up to 600 (yes, 600) hours of language training to non-German speaking immigrants.  That way, they will have a much easier time assimilating into German society - particularly the German job market.  Not a bad idea, no matter what continent you are on, if you ask me.

Dr. Scharioth had actually studied in Idaho many years ago, so he shared some good stories about travelling through the American West as well - it was a very entertaining hour and a half.

Next on the agenda:  I am going to be in LA visiting clients the week after Thanksgiving, so it's about time to prepare for that.  Hope to see a lot of clients and old friends between Santa Monica, Century City, South Bay, and Orange County.

Best,
Geoff

Wrapping up the ATA Conference #51

Well the ATA Conference has come and gone - what a great event.

On Friday morning, I did end up choosing "The End of Translation as we know it:  Were the Luddites Right?".  The speaker was Jost Zetzsche.  He was referring to the "Luddites", who went around England and destroyed the looms that took their jobs.  Are translators losing their jobs to machines?  The question is an extremely hot topic in our industry.  There are certain new technologies that are capable of replacing certain translation situations, this is true.  And for a company like ours, it is important to keep an eye on these tools and use them when appropriate.  However, with  all the tools that I've seen, I have yet to find anything that has close to the capabilities of my native-speaking human team.  The great thing is that tools, such as Trados or Wordfast, can be helpful to my translators in providing more consistent translations - faster.  An interesting point he brought up is that there is - and has been since the 1950's - the "5 year rule".  Since the first machine translation of 12 Russian sentences in the 1950's, people have been saying that "in 5 years, there will no longer be a need for human translation".  Well, let's be honest, we're making some serious progress right now... but we're not there yet.

Lunch was with two great Spanish translators that I have been working with for a while now, Marta and Cecilia.  Cecilia made it all the way from Córdoba, Argentina for the conference - I hope she enjoyed Colorado!

My afternoon session on Friday was on social media for translators with Marsela A. Jenney.  I may have even gotten a few tips for this blog (thanks Marsela!)  Some of it was a review for me but there were some very good tips mixed in as well.  Apparently I should "write with passion in an authentic voice"... we'll see how it goes! :)

I spent the rest of the conference networking and catching up on work.  I even got to direct someone to a day trip in the Rockies in German, and I met many of the "locals" - other members of the Colorado Translator Association.

The ATA conference was well worth it this year - I'm REALLY looking forward to the annual conference next year in Boston.

Best,
Geoff

Good morning from Denver

Just wanted to check in quickly with an update from yesterday.  It was such a busy day that I did not even have a break.  The first session I attended was a German>English financial translation seminar.  Very specific, but very interesting for me.  After that, I had lunch with a great Italian translator that I work with from San Francisco.  We talked about translation... and guitars.  That was followed by some networking and looking for new translators at the "translator marketplace".  The afternoon session I attended was about international payment methods, and it will literally probably save me hundreds of dollars each year - very informative!

As I'm typing this, I just got done speaking with the linguist who translates Hillary Clinton's texts into French.  What a job!  At 10:00 this morning, I will have to decide between a session about the finances of a translation company and a session about "the end of translation as we know it" - both sound very interesting.  Lunch today is with two Spanish-speaking native South American linguists... should be fun!

That's it for now.  So far, this conference has been well worth the effort.

Best,
Geoff

ATA Conference begins!

Just getting ready to head out to the Hyatt Regency in Denver for the ATA annual conference.  I've already heard from a handful of translators that are already there.... it's going to be fun!  I've decided to update my blog daily through Saturday with conference updates, so stay tuned.

Best,
Geoff

October news

Hello again,

Well summer came and went too fast - like always.  Now the leaves are changing here in Fort Collins and we're getting some cool, rainy days.  Perfect translating weather!

I did get to visit with a lot of translators when I went to San Francisco in July... Italian, German, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish.  I even got to speak some German with an old friend that I studied with back at my college exchange program in Germany.  He's now working in the localization department at Google, which was really fascinating.  I also got to tour Oracle on my tour through Silicon Valley.  Needless to say, it was a very worthwhile trip.  I really enjoyed sitting down with the translators and just asking questions about their native languages - whether it's grammar, cultural influence on the language, how these issues fit into our projects, or anything else.

Hanging out at Google HQ

In particular, I learned a great deal about Chinese on that trip, and I have been learning more about the language ever since.  Chinese is a difficult language to get a "grasp" on for a few reasons.  First of all, there is a disconnect between the spoken and written versions.  By that, I mean that there are many spoken dialects that are different enough to almost be classified as different languages (in fact, Cantonese is considered to be a different language), but they often use the same alphabet.  On top of that, there are different alphabets used in different areas (simplified script vs. traditional).  Mandarin is the most widely spoken dialect, and simplified characters are used in the People's Republic of China, so that is the most common "version" (for lack of a better word) of Chinese that our clients are looking for.  However, traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other areas, so that is also common.  As I update this blog, I hope to include more language-specific information like this, because I feel like it could be very useful to a lot of readers.

What else is new?  We have been working on a few side projects here and there over the summer.  We recently translated the Project Smile non-profit website so that Spanish-speaking families could use the wonderful service they provide.  You can find that here:  http://www.projectsmilefc.org/spanish/index.php.

Right now all signs point to Denver, with the American Translators Association annual conference next week. It is October 27-30, and over 1,500 translators and interpreters will be in attendance.  I was able to go to the 2007 annual conference in San Francisco, and it was phenomenal, so I am really looking forward to this one.

Until next time!

Best,
Geoff

Welcome to our blog!

Thanks for checking out the new blog for Global Accent.

I thought this would be an easy way to keep up with clients, translators, and everyone else interested in the company.  This is a perfect time to start the blog, with a lot of interesting activities around the corner.  I'll be going to the Bay Area in a few weeks to meet up with many of my translators, which I am thrilled about.  In addition, the ATA Annual Conference is coming to DENVER this year (about 1 hour from the Global Accent HQ), at the end of October, so that will be a very exciting time as well.

Aside from those fun events, there is a lot going on in our world with many new projects and a number of new capabilities we can offer our clients. Over the last 12 months, we have taken on many new types of work - much of which has been market research related.  Whether we are listening to interviews, briefing interviewers, checking in-language online programs, or formatting new files in-language, times have been very busy around here!  And of course, that is on top of all the standard translation, editing, and proofreading projects we are still constantly working on.

I hope you'll find this blog insightful and interesting, and I hope you will check back with us again soon!

Best,
Geoff