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August 5, 2006, #001
Table of Contents

1. Are You a Walking Encyclopedia?
2. Translation Tool of the Month - WordTranslator
3. Review: Bilingual? Make Money!
4. Love Online Dictionaries?
5. Quote: Antonio Porchia

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1. Are You a Walking Encyclopedia?

One of my translation professors in college, Dr. Labrum, would tell us practically every day to be "enciclopedias amublantes" or walking encyclopedias.

What does that mean?

Well, it doesn't mean knowing every last detail about everything there is to know in the world. Rather, it means that as translators (and interpreters), we should be aware of what has happened in the past, what is happening right now, and what might happen in the future so that when we do our jobs, we can have the full benefit of having the context of the translation available to us.

Granted there are tools out there (the Internet being the biggest one) that can help us learn about the context of whatever we are working on, but tools will only get us so far. If that wasn't the case, computers would have taken the job from us long ago.

It's easy as a translator to get so focused on our own area of speciality and forget about everything else that is happening around us. However, world dynamics will always have an effect on the context of what we are translating or interpreting, even if it doesn't seem like it.

So this month, step outside your box. Take in a little more of the world around you and see if that doesn't help you understand just a little bit better the context of what you're working on.

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2. Translation Tool of the Month: WordTranslator

This month's translation tool is a freely available language tool from Google (who else?) called WordTranslator. While it's not going to do your translations for you, it could help you improve your vocabulary, which in turn improves your translation ability.

The way WordTranslator works is that once it's activated, you can hover your mouse over any word in your browser and the translation(s) of that word will appear in a small pop-up text area. As of right now, the Google WordTranslator only offers translations from English to Simplified/Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.

WordTranslator can be accessed from the Google toolbar on both Internet Explorer and Firefox. In order to activate it, go to the options tab and click on the box next to WordTranslator. If you don't have the Google toolbar, you'll have to download from their site first.

While the WordTranslator is an interesting feature, its vocabulary is fairly limited. For example, it had no available translation for underlying or entropy.

It's still an interesting tool, though.

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3. Review: Bilingual Jobs

The other day I was ran across a website from a translation agency that sells a translator/interpreter starter pack called Bilingual? Make Money! According to the website, this starter packet includes a guide with "everything you need to know to make money in the translation industry on a full or part-time basis."

I'll be honest. I haven't ordered this packet so I don't know how good it is. However, they do say that included with your order is a guaranteed job that they will pay you to do (because they are an agency).

The kit is $19.95 and it might be worthwhile to check it out. If anyone has ordered this product, let me know what you thought and I'll add it to next month's Translator Techniques so that everyone can know.

P.S. If you've run across any translation websites or products that you have experience with (either good or bad), write up a quick summary and I'll post it either in the newsletter or on Spanish Translation Help so that everyone can benefit.

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4. Love Online Dictionaries?

So we all know that there are hundreds and thousands of dictionaries on the Internet. The trouble comes when trying to find a specific one that we need for our translation work. Well, thanks to the Wikiwords dictionary online, that shouldn't be much of a problem anymore.

According to the website, "Wikiwords is a collaborative project to create a dictionary of all terms in all languages with definitions and example sentences."

One of the good things about the dictionary is that it is user-maintained, meaning that anybody can contribute their meanings and translations. However, there are mechanisms in place to make sure that the translations are good quality.

If you have a ProZ.com account, I believe you can use that to log in to Wikiwords.org to start adding definitions and translations.

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5. Quote

"Lo que dicen las palabras no dura. Duran las palabras. Porque las palabras son siempre las mismas y lo que dicen no es nunca lo mismo." - Poet Antonio Porchia

"What words say does not last. The words last. Because words are always the same, and what they say is never the same." - translated by W.S. Merwin

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