You are currently browsing the archives for September, 2009.
by Patricia
The last section of the White House’s report, A Strategy for American Innovation: Driving towards Sustainable Growth and Quality Jobs issued September 20, 2009, presents “the President’s renewed commitment to science, technology and innovation [that] will allow the nation to set and meet ambitious goals that will improve our quality of life and establish the foundation for the industries and jobs of the future.”
The last of these 8 proposals supports:
Automatic, highly accurate and real-time translation between the major languages of the world – greatly lowering the barriers to international commerce and collaboration.
Let’s see how popular MT services translate the sentence into French. Continue Reading…
Posted 5 months, 1 week ago at 2:08 pm. 3 comments
by Patricia
Les professionnels indépendants ne sont jamais totalement à l’abri de mauvaises surprises, même s’ils appliquent à la lettre les précautions d’usage. De plus, après plusieurs années de collaboration agréable avec un client fidèle, il est facile de perdre le réflexe de faire un tour sur www.societe.com, Infogreffe, ou autre service de renseignements juridiques sur les entreprises (françaises, bien entendu).
Leçon apprise : j’ai ma première ardoise.
Tout n’est pas perdu. Mais il faut mettre toutes les chances de votre côté pour récupérer votre créance et, avec un peu de chance, sans attendre un éventuel plan de continuation par lequel les dettes des entreprises sont réglées au compte goutte sur une longue période. Continue Reading…
Posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago at 10:48 am. Add a comment
by Patricia
Since I suffered my first (and, knock wood) only total data loss back in the last century, I’ve become a back-up junkie.
Where others collect coins, stamps, or eggcups, I collect storage hardware: 3 1/2 inch diskettes, SuperDisks, Zip disks, CD-Roms, external hard drives, flash drives, smart cards, USB keys, and the computers whose data they preserved.
A bit excessive? Probably. The memory of a serious scolding when I was a child remains. Told to go clean up my room, I did just that, and pitched a bunch of family letters my eight year-old’s logic considered useless to keep. The rule of thumb for data has become “better safe than sorry.”
I’ve tried to convey that fear to my husband. Largely unsuccessfully. Where I keep multiple copies of all my data, only recently did he heed the call to back-up his computer on an external hard drive. He didn’t see the point of repeating this time-consuming process twice.
Last week, his computer was infected with a virus. While he was doing a clean reinstall, the external HDD fell. It’s toast. He lost a magnificent slide collection representing decades of work in the northern Alps. We hope data recovery experts will be able to salvage it.
My multiple copies and daily back-up routines don’t seem as loony now. If one gizmo breaks down, I don’t waste time running to the data hospital and I know my clients’ documents are safe. Last year, a client phoned, panicked: the company’s IT system had been infected and my client had lost a year’s worth of documents we had worked on together. Within an hour, I sent my client a zip file with all the source documents, translations, and the in-house glossary we had developed to provide that organization with reliable terminology standards.
Andrew Bell over at the Watercooler has chosen Sustainability in Translation as the theme for his October book contest. Preserving data integrity is one of the keys to providing value and service to clients (even years after a job is done), working both efficiently and effectively, building on your knowledge and skills.
If you are a back-up junkie? Tell us how that has served your business and your clients’ needs!
Posted 5 months, 3 weeks ago at 9:56 am. Add a comment
by Patricia
A log of stumbled-upon bloopers and flops | Un journal de bord de bourdes et bides découverts par hasard
30.11.09
Une bourde de 530 000 € !
Le numéro 995 de Courrier International évoque le coûteux raté de la campagne de pub’ visant à promouvoir la Lettonie auprès de touristes anglo-saxons.
“Riga city: easy to go, hard to live”
Pas franchement un slogan capable de séduire ! Vous l’aurez compris, l’affiche devait dire hard to leave.
Coût de la campagne ratée? 530 000 €, hors dégâts collatéraux.
Encore un exemple, sûrement, d’un donneur d’ordre souhaitant faire des économies de bouts de chandelle sur son budget traduction et révision !
16.09.09
Deux photos prises sur le vif Avenue Berthelot, à Lyon.
Pauvre Jaurès, s'il avait su...
Spécialité lyonnaise?
10.09.09
Transpositions can curtail your appetite
The Group Bertrand is one of leading independent restaurant groups in France, with a turnover of €112 M in 2008.
It’s branding signature in French is “Innover dans la restauration”. Trendy architecture, concept restaurants, and creative associations of herbs and spices come to mind.
Translated Transposed into English, the tag becomes insipid gobbledygook: “Innovate in the restauration”.
Does that whet your taste buds?
02.09.09
http://www.nice.aeroport.fr/?l=2
“New Exposure at the Airport Pittoresque”
That should be a revealing exhibit! You have until the end of October to catch it.
29.08.09
www.corporate.airfrance.com
Bellevue*, anyone?
*psychiatric hospital in New York City.
Posted 5 months, 3 weeks ago at 5:46 pm. Add a comment
by Patricia
Comme tout traducteur spécialisé, je choisis mes projets en fonction de la valeur ajoutée que je peux apporter au client. Typiquement, mon plan de charge est composé de bons projets, c’est-à-dire intellectuellement enrichissants, bien écrits, et qui ont une réelle valeur pour l’entreprise, et de projets plus utilitaires, documents que le client a besoin de faire traduire dans
le cadre de son activité.
De temps à autre, un projet permet de conjuguer expertise professionnelle (RSE, développement durable, communication d’entreprise) et engagements personnels (protection animale et protection de l’environnement).
Là, c’est le bonheur assuré.
C’est le cas de TAAC, The Animal Affinity Club, une association à vocation internationale dont je suis le développement depuis l’idée initiale il y a bon nombre d’années déjà et qui a enfin vu le jour en 2008.
TAAC propose aux entreprises et entrepreneurs de renforcer et valoriser leur engagement sociétal grâce à des partenariats solidaires innovants et à une thématique d’avenir : le lien Homme-Animal.
Autrement dit, TAAC aide à orienter le mécénat d’entreprise vers le soutien d’associations de terrain qui œuvrent pour le respect de la nature et la promotion du lien homme-animal sans lesquels la survie de l’espèce humaine, à terme, est à risque.
Pour répondre à son positionnement résolument haut de gamme orienté grands comptes et CSP+ et promouvoir son internationalisation, TAAC a entrepris la refonte de son site Internet dont la première partie vient d’être mise en ligne. Continue Reading…
Posted 6 months ago at 7:54 pm. Add a comment
by Patricia
Jargon. The sound of that word makes me reach for a Tums. Jargon, as in “meaningless-gibberish-that-sounds-like-a-money-wrote-it.”
No, I am not referring to precise terminology used by a specific group of people and only occasionally understood by those outside the group. If, for example, you are writing or translating a medical text for an audience of specialists, you should be writing perorbital hæmatoma and not the plain English ‘black eye’ or the French layman’s ‘œil au beurre noir’.
I am talking about my pet peeve (or one of them, rather), the use of jargon that has become as prevalent as driver incivility.
Continue Reading…
Posted 6 months ago at 11:46 pm. Add a comment
