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ChronicleThe

A Publication of

the American

Translators

Association

June 2002

Volume XXXI

Number 6

in this issueAdapting for Success

Don’t Let Summer Sizzle By Without

Registering for

Hyatt Regency Hotel • Atlanta, GeorgiaATA’s 43rd Annual Conference

November 6 - 9, 2002See page 52 for all the details.

in this issue June 2002

Volume XXXI

Number 6

Features

13 International Certification Study: ArgentinaBy Jiri Stejskal

16 Marketing Myself, I Can If I Want ToBy Michael KlingerHow to succeed in developing your own freelance translation business by followingprinciples based on business theories and matrices for individual achievement.

18 The Awesome Power of Asking the Right QuestionsBy Dr. Barton Goldsmith Questions are meant to assist, not demean, and will help everyone involved worktogether to find the best answers.

19 The SSTI/NAJIT Translation and Interpretation National Certification ExaminationBy Dagoberto OrrantiaCourt interpreting in the U.S. has not yet attained the level of licensure, but a numberof governmental and nongovernmental entities are certifying court interpreters. Onesuch exam, designed by the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters andTranslators, leads to a Certificate of Competency in Judiciary Translation andInterpretation.

23 The Professional Association of Localization By Nancy A. LockeThe Professional Association of Localization is dedicated to improving the workenvironment of all localization professionals, and to making sure that theseprofessionals honor their promise to deliver quality to clients.

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Translators

Association

About Our AuthorsFrom the PresidentFrom the Executive Director Letters to the EditorConferences and EventsThe OnionskinDictionary Reviews The Translation InquirerHumor and Translation Display Advertising IndexNew Active and Corresponding MembersATA Chapters and Groups Marketplace

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The ATA Chronicle | June 20024

2002 ChronicleEditorial Calendar

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The ATA Chronicle | June 2002 5

24 Simplified vs. Traditional Chinese: What Every Translation Agency Should KnowBy Jessie Lu and Claire LiuAlthough the Simplified and Traditional Chinese characters used in Mainland Chinaand Taiwan are based on the same writing system, variations exist which can be tracedto cultural differences and the prolonged political separation of the two regions.

29 The New (and Not So New) Words Bred by the Argentine CrisisBy Rut SimcovichThe existence of a crisis magnifies the communications “gap,” and nowhere is this moreprevalent than in cases where references to the events unfolding are absolutely alien tothe target culture.

31 Slavic Translation for the Determined: Reflections of a Polyglot TranslatorBy Ursula KlingenbergAn interview with Joel Stern, a staff member of the Office of Language Services at theState Department, who translates from several Slavic languages into English for thatinstitution.

38 In Praise of the Ivory TowerBy Marilyn Gaddis RoseIn the Ivory Tower of the Academy, practical training is the inner staircase of translationstudies. However, in training classes the attention given to current practices must bebalanced by disciplinary and research-oriented translation studies.

41 The Writing Life By Howard GoldblattConfessions of a literary translator.

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About Our Authors...

Howard Goldblatt is one of the mostwidely respected translators of Chineseinto English. He has authored or edited sixbooks on Chinese literature and has pub-lished many articles, in English andChinese, on modern and contemporaryChinese literature, culture, and literarypolitics. Besides professional journals, hisessays have appeared in TIME Magazine,The New York Times, The Los AngelesTimes, The Times of London, and WorldLiterature Today (one of several editorialboards, East and West, on which heserves). He is the translator of more than30 Chinese novels and short story collec-tions from Mainland China and Taiwan. He co-translated, with Sylvia Li-chun Lin, ChuT´ien-wen’s Notes of a Desolate Man,which was selected as a “Best Book of1999” by The New York Times and TheLos Angeles Times, and was chosen as“Translation of the Year” (1999) by theAmerican Literary Translators Association.He was founding editor of the journalModern Chinese Literature (1984). He isa research professor of Chinese at Notre Dame. Contact: [email protected].

Dr. Barton Goldsmith isan international speaker,author, and consultantwho is considered anexpert on leadership. He isa contributing author to

numerous books and publications,including The Los Angeles BusinessJournal. Contact:www.BartonGoldsmith.com.

Mike Klinger has been inthe globalization industryfor 10-plus years as atranslator, project man-ager, and business devel-opment manager. He

presently manages the globalization divi-sion at Venturi Technology Partners (for-merly InfoTech), which providestranslation and localization outsourcingand staffing services. Contact:[email protected].

Ursula Klingenberg has been a freelanceEnglish<>Polish translator for over adecade. She is ATA-accredited (English-Polish) and specializes in busi-ness, finance, legal, marketing, media, andart translations. She holds a Master ofArts diploma in English from PoznanUniversity, where she also taught Englishand translation. She is a court interpreterwith the Minnesota State Court, andserves as an assistant editor to SlavFile,the newsletter of ATA’s Slavic LanguagesDivision. Contact: [email protected].

Nancy A. Locke is a multi-lingual desktop publishingspecialist with six years ofexperience and a freelancewriter. Formerly the con-tributing editor of the

Suite101.com localization topic, she wasrecently elected to the board of directorsof the Professional Association ofLocalization. Contact: [email protected] [email protected].

Claire Liu is an ATA-accredited (English-Chinese) translator born inTaipei, Taiwan. Shereceived an M.A. fromNew York University. After

a four-year career as a journalist inTaiwan, she moved to California in 1997,where she entered the translation field asa literary translator. Since then, she hastranslated more than 25 full-length books,including The Century and How to Thinklike Leonardo da Vinci. Two years ago sheswitched her focus to concentrate onbusiness translations for the U.S. market.Contact: [email protected].

Jessie Lu is an ATA-accredited (English-Chinese) trans-lator originally from China,with primary interests inscientific and technolog-

ical translations. He was a co-founder andformer language chair of the ATA English-Chinese accreditation exam. Heworked as a senior engineer and an experimental scientist for several U.S.

government agencies before becoming afull-time freelance translator. He has morethan 10 years of experience in the transla-tion industry. Contact: [email protected].

Dagoberto Orrantia is an associate pro-fessor of Spanish at John Jay College andthe Graduate School of CUNY, where heteaches court interpreting and legal transla-tion. He is past editor of Proteus, thenewsletter of the National Association ofJudiciary Interpreters and Translators. Hehas lectured widely on the translation ofcourtroom discourse and specialized termi-nology, and has conducted workshops andseminars throughout the U.S. and in Brazil,Mexico, and Puerto Rico. He holds a Ph.D.from the University of Illinois at Urbana. Heis an ATA-accredited (English<>Spanish)translator and a federally certified courtinterpreter. Contact: [email protected].

Marilyn Gaddis Rose, 1988 GodeMedallist, is founding director of theTranslation Research and InstructionProgram (TRIP) at the State University ofNew York at Binghamton, where she is adistinguished service professor of com-parative literature. TRIP, founded in 1971,shared the 1981 Gode Medal withGeorgetown and Monterey. She wasfounding editor of the ATA Series andedits the biennial Translation Perspectives.Her most recent publication is Translationand Literary Criticism (Manchester: St.Jerome, 1997). Contact: [email protected].

Rut Simcovich is anArgentine freelanceEnglish-Spanish translatorand interpreter. She hasbeen running interpreter-training courses since

1986. She was the court-appointed inter-preter in the trial of the Argentine MilitaryJuntas, and currently works for clientssuch as the U.K. Embassy, the World Bank,and The Coca-Cola Company. She is theformer president of the ArgentineAssociation of Translators and Interpreters.Contact: [email protected].


From the PresidentATA Goes to Sweden

Thomas L. West [email protected]

In April, I had the honor of repre-senting ATA at the annual meetingof the Swedish Association of

Professional Translators (SverigesFacköversättarförening), known by itsSwedish initials SFÖ. Two of my goalsin attending the meeting were toexplore the possibilities of developinga Swedish-to-English accreditationexamination, and to look for a speakerto provide continuing education forNordic translators at our conference. Iam pleased to report that RobertGeorge Dewsnap, an experienced med-ical translator who has taught transla-tion at Lund University, will bepresenting a half-day seminar inAtlanta on medical translation forNordic translators (particularly thosewho translate between Swedish andEnglish). On the accreditation front, Iwas able to procure the passages from the most recent examinationadministered by the Association of

Authorized Translators in Sweden,and am hopeful that we can get theball rolling on Swedish accreditationthis year.

ATA was well represented at theconference. Our own Susan Larsson,who now heads up the EnglishNetwork in SFÖ, gave one of herpopular talks (in Swedish!) on how tosearch the Internet. Chris Durbanbrought down the house with filmclips and a presentation on “GettingIntelligent Feedback: TranslatorImage and Interaction.” Also in atten-dance were ATA members DanLufkin, Mireille Key, Per Dohler,Tonia Tell-Cerexhe, Lisbeth Mejer,and Lars Wiggers-Jeppesen.

I was invited to introduce ATA at aplenary session, and also gave a talkon legal language to the EnglishNetwork. One of the exciting things Ilearned there is that the EnglishNetwork has published two booklets

that will be of great interest to anyoneworking in the Swedish-English lan-guage combination. One of them is aguide to Translating Names, and theother is entitled Pitfalls in Swedish-English Commercial Translation. Iplan to see whether our NordicDivision can make these bookletsavailable for sale to our members. Ialso received from SFÖ memberDavid Kendall an annotated list ofresources for translators working inSwedish. David has kindly given uspermission to publish the list in afuture issue of the ATA Chronicle.

Finally, one of the exhibitors,Wordfinder AB (www.wordfinder.se),produces a CD-ROM that containsalmost every significant dictionary inthe Swedish-English language pair.This means that a translator can clickin one place and search for a term in

This seminar features an in-depth look at the business of translatingand interpreting. More information on the program will be e-mailedto all members and posted on the ATA website. All presentations willbe in English.

Plus, an ATA accreditation exam sitting is scheduled for Sundaymorning, August 11, in the hotel. (A separate registration is requiredfor the exam. Please contact ATA Headquarters for more information.)

Space is limited. To register, contact ATA Headquarters at 703-683-6100 or visit the ATA website—www.atanet.org—On the home page, click on the Business Seminar link.

A few rooms have been reserved at $169 a night, plus tax. Toreserve a hotel room, contact the Wyndham at (617) 556-0006. Be sure to mention that you are attending the ATA seminar.

AnnouncingATA’s The Business of Translating and Interpreting SeminarWyndham HotelBoston, Massachusetts • August 10, 2002

Fee: $165 ATA members; $245 nonmembers • After August 1: $235 members; $330 nonmembers

Continued on p.51

See page 57 for complete information.

An ATA Professional Development Seminar

Court Translating and Interpreting Seminar • San Francisco, California • September 14, 2002Plan Ahead:


From the Executive DirectorATA Professional Development Seminars Continued

I wrote in my March column, “Pastfeedback has told us that ATAmembers want more professional

development opportunities than justthe Annual Conference.” I can nowtake this a step further and say morethan 100 members registered for theATA Medical Translation andInterpreting Seminar held in Chicago,May 18. While I don’t have the feed-back yet from this seminar, it was asuccess by the numbers.

ATA Professional DevelopmentSeminars are one-day educational ses-sions that focus on a specific area (e.g.,medical translation and interpreting).The sessions feature subject-matterexperts with real-world experience.

Building upon the success inChicago, we have scheduled the nextseminar: The Business of Translatingand Interpreting, Wyndham Hotel,Boston, Massachusetts, August 10,2002. ATA Professional Development

Chair Marian S. Greenfield, whocoordinates the content for the semi-nars, says this seminar will havesomething for everyone: freelancers,small business owners, and even in-house employees.

The final content reflects the resultsof a broadcast survey we conducted.We asked you what topics you wouldlike to see addressed. We were pleas-antly surprised with more than 500responses filled with great ideas. Whilewe can only focus on a handful oftopics, at most, during a one-day sem-inar, we will definitely be able to usethese ideas for future seminars.

Following The Business ofTranslating and Interpreting, we arefinalizing the details for CourtTranslating and Interpreting, in SanFrancisco, California, September 14,2002. Mark your calendar and be sureto watch the ATA Chronicle and theATA website for more information

and to register for these ATAProfessional Development Seminars.

Watch your mailbox!The ATA Membership Directory

will be mailed this month. Be sure tocheck your listing and let us know ofany changes or corrections. TheMembership Directory is only mailedto ATA members and is designed tofacilitate communication amongmembers. (The online directories arefor marketing members’ services tocompanies and the general public.)

The ATA 43rd Annual ConferencePreliminary Program will be mailedin late July. The information will alsobe available online. Plan now toattend this year’s conference inAtlanta, Georgia, November 6-9.

Walter Bacak, [email protected]

Plan now to exhibit at the American Translators Association’s 43rd Annual Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, November 6–9, 2002.Exhibiting at the ATA Annual Conference offers the best opportunity to market your products and services face-to-face tomore than 1,500 translators in one location.Translators are consumers of computer hardware and software, technical publications and reference books, office products,and much more. Face-to-face selling, as you know, is the most effective and successful method of marketing. The ATAAnnual Conference is the perfect venue, and you are assured of excellent visibility.Exhibit space is limited, so please reserve your space today. For additional information, please contact Brian Wallace,McNeill Group Inc.; [email protected]; (215) 321-9662, ext. 38; Fax: (215) 321-9636.

Attention ExhibitorsAmerican Translators Association 43rd Annual ConferenceAtlanta, Georgia • Hyatt Regency Hotel • November 6-9, 2002


Letters to the Editor

NSA/CSS Responds to Terrorism Members of the ATA, the premier

U.S. professional association fortranslators and interpreters, shouldknow the truth about their govern-ment’s fight against terrorism, so Iwould like to respond to RinaNe’eman’s article, “TranslatingTerrorism” (ATA Chronicle, March2002, Volume XXXI, Number 3). Ianswer both as the National SecurityAgency/Central Security ServiceSenior Language Authority and as alanguage professional myself.

Ms. Ne’eman is correct in statingthat “intelligence is the most criticallink in the prevention of internationalterrorism,... [that] uncompromisinglyaccurate translation is one of the mostcritical components of intelligence,”and that those in the U.S. translationindustry are in a unique position tohelp in this fight. However, she basesher article on erroneous assumptionsand unsubstantiated assertions aboutthe language professionals who areon the battle lines now. First, sheassumes that the U.S. IntelligenceCommunity (IC), in particular theFBI and the National SecurityAgency, is waging the war againstterrorism using contracted, untrained,and uninformed translators whohappen to be native speakers, like theArabic-speaking welder whom shementions. Second, she states thatgovernment language proficiencytests are “ridiculously easy, and donot constitute any real indication ofsuitability to the mammoth job.” Andthird, she says that the governmentpay for translators is far below whatexpert translators earn. These state-ments are far from the truth.

To be more specific, first, Ms.Ne’eman’s not-too-polite statementthat “it is no secret in the translationindustry that the finest translators andinterpreters are not often to be foundin [these] government agencies...” iscompletely unfounded. A statementsuch as this, with no reference to anyresearch or survey, is surely suspectat any time. The truth is that the IC

employs thousands of full-time lan-guage professionals as salaried, reg-ular civil servants and militarypersonnel. In fact, the IC’s civilianagencies are our nation’s largestemployer of language professionals,and these include the best and thebrightest, who do not stop at transla-tion, but rather synthesize and reporta wide variety of materials. Manyhold high-level security clearanceswhich enable them to translate,process, analyze, and report on sensi-tive, classified information vital toour nation’s security. They are largelyunknown to Ms. Ne’eman and toother commercial and freelancetranslators because they do not needto network and search out translationjobs. If they hold security clearances,they do not put themselves in thespotlight when they attend confer-ences and other public meetings.They do not, and must not, discusstheir work in public. It is true thatgovernment agencies contract fortranslators, but the number of con-tractors is quite small compared tothe size of the full-time workforce.The work these contractors do isoften limited in scope; as nongovern-mental assets, they are generally notthe analysts who interpret the infor-mation for policymakers and generalswithin the language intelligence con-text. That “next step” of languagework is left to full-time governmentresources precisely to avoid Ms.Ne’emen’s high school math sce-nario. One problem the IC hasencountered is that security clear-ances require U.S. citizenship, whichmany expert translators do not have.

Second, regarding government lan-guage testing, Ms. Ne’eman is also farfrom the mark. Many U.S. governmentlanguage professionals hold ATAaccreditation in their language pairs.They have found the government testbatteries as challenging, or even moredifficult than, the ATA accreditationexam. The latter has five texts, gearedto a variety of topics but not to a spe-cific level of difficulty, of which two

must be translated very well. An aspi-rant for ATA accreditation may be ableto chose two lower-level texts andbecome accredited. In contrast, U.S.government exams are calibrated to theInteragency Language Roundtable(ILR)/ACTFL Proficiency scales (0 to5 in Reading, Listening, Speaking, andWriting). The ILR/ACTFL scaledescribes the difficulty and complexitythat language professionals must beable to handle at each level andbetween levels. The government’s pro-fessional level proficiency is at least3/3+, which is just under that of highlyeducated native fluency. The followingis a quote from the description of Level3+ Reading proficiency:

Can comprehend a variety ofstyles and forms pertinent to pro-fessional needs. Rarely misinter-prets such texts or rarelyexperiences difficulty relatingideas or making inferences. Ableto comprehend many sociolin-guistic and cultural referencesAble to comprehend a consider-able range of intentionally com-plex structures, low-frequencyidioms, and uncommon connota-tive intentions….

(For complete ILR ProficiencyScale descriptions, see www. fmc.utm.edu/~rpeckham/ilrhome.html.) A lan-guage specialist with Level 3/3+understands the technical complexi-ties of the war against terrorism.

Ms. Ne’eman’s third unfortunatestatement is that trained translatorswho could work in the highly special-ized fields needed for the translationwar against terrorism would not workfor the low government wagesoffered. It is true that no one gets richworking on the federal government’spay scale, and also that highly trainedprivate sector translators in special-ized fields and in less-commonlyavailable languages may earn a lot ofmoney. However, the federal salariesare not so bad, and our language pro-fessionals go home every night ➡


knowing they have really made a dif-ference to our national security. Manyfreelance translators often work hand-to-mouth, spending time constantlysearching for jobs and working morethan 40 hours per week at non-lan-guage jobs to make ends meet. Anaverage civilian professional federallanguage analyst working in theWashington, DC area may easilymake $75,000 (Grade 13/Step 5), andgovernment benefits are solid. (Forthe government pay scale, see www.opm.gov/oca/02tables/indexGS.htm.)

I personally invite any skilled,professional translator who wishesto investigate a position with theU.S. government at this crucial timeto look at the NSA website(www.nsa.gov) and at the websites ofother IC agencies. Each has employ-ment information. Don’t be taken inby inflammatory criticism and unsup-portable statements about our govern-ment’s actions in this translation war.We are fighting with the right tools,highly expert language professionals,and we could use more of them.

Renee M. MeyerNSA/CSS Senior Language Authority

An Insider’s Point of ViewA Response to “TranslatingTerrorism” by Rina Ne’eman

The role of the FBI translator ishighly specialized and dedicated to afield that is unknown to the outsider.

FBI translators are, first and fore-most, selected for their trustworthinessand loyalty. This selection takes prece-dence in light of the nature of the workand national security issues. The secondpriority in selecting FBI translators isthe ability a prospective employee hasin a foreign language. A generalized testis given which reflects well-rounded-ness in the foreign language as well as agood command of the English lan-guage. At this point, the specializationprocess begins. The FBI translator isintroduced to all jurisdictional cases,Bureau terminology, and idiosyncrasiesof government work. Through experi-

ence, the novice translator becomes ahighly specialized weapon against anythreat to our national security.

The government’s need for trans-lators is great, but no amount of out-side experience or specialization caneffectively prepare a translator for thenature of FBI work.

E.S. Morgan

Machine Translation Misunderstood After reading the article, “Kevin

Hendzel Sets PBS Viewers Straight...”(March 2002 issue), I felt I needed torespond as my “outreach activity forclient education.”

As a professional translator (with amaster’s degree from the MontereyInstitute) turned machine translation(MT) insider (I’ve worked for a leadingMT provider), I quickly learned thatMT is easily misunderstood by thosewho are not educated about its abilitiesor its limitations. As such, MT has suf-fered from exaggerated claims andimpossible expectations.

First, you must realize that MT hasnever claimed that it produces perfecttranslations, nor has it claimed to beable to replace human translators. Ithas a very distinct purpose...to allowpeople to quickly understand the “gist”of a given text or document written inanother language. It is, therefore, notsuitable for those wishing publication-quality translations.

In addition, it is not suitable for lit-erary- or journalistic-style texts, whichoften contain references, ambiguities,idiomatic expressions, and metaphors,such as the example in Durst’s writing,“the red, white, and blue bowling ballon the ping pong table of commerce,”mentioned in the article. MT is mostsuccessful in technical texts becausethe writing styles must be simple andstraightforward to be effectivelyunderstood by the reader.

Second, Kevin’s practice of trans-lating a sentence into Italian, thenback again into English, is a veryserious no-no in determining thequality of a MT system. When you

translate a sentence, a certain degreeof inaccuracy is involved. Therefore,when you translate this slightly inac-curate sentence back into the originallanguage, you get the translationinaccuracy of the first sentence multi-plied by the inaccuracy of the secondtranslation. The more you translatethe text back and forth, the moreinaccurate the translation will be.

In addition, it is important to notethat MT systems are not comprised ofone-to-one dictionaries that give thesame word regardless of which direc-tion you are translating between twogiven languages. They consist of uni-directional systems (translating onlyfrom one language into another, notboth ways) that involve complicatedprograms which analyze context andsyntactical and grammatical struc-tures. Therefore if, say, you wanted totranslate the English word “office”into French, you would get “bureau.”If you then take “bureau” and trans-late it back to English, you get“desk.” This is just one example ofhow MT is not designed to performone-to-one translations.

Most importantly, however, is theuse of Babelfish as the definitivesource for judging the quality of MTsystems. It must be known thatBabelfish is the very basic form of theunderlying MT system. It does notallow for any customization, which isprecisely why it is offered free to thepublic. Those concerned with transla-tion quality who wish to implementMT into their environment must makea serious commitment. They must uti-lize the various tools available forcustomizing lexicons, adhere toindustry standards in terms of thevocabulary, style, and content used indocuments which are to be translated,and, quite possibly, invest in cus-tomized improvement of the softwareitself. The implementation of one ormore of these methods may result in avery high quality of translation.

Until people fully understand thecomplexities involved with MT, as well


as the purpose it serves, MT willcontinue to be criticized, attacked, andbe the brunt of much undeserving jokes.

Shannon [email protected]

Kevin Hendzel RespondsPublic misunderstanding of machine

translation (MT) is indeed the issue,and you are quite right to point thatout. Your comment that “MT has neverclaimed that it produces perfect trans-lations, nor has it claimed to replacehuman translators,” unfortunately, con-tradicts the historical record, particu-larly the sustained chorus oftechno-hype on MT in the popularmedia dating back 30 years.

Claims that MT was fasterand superior to humans and would“completely replace human translatorswithin the decade” can be traced tospeculative media predictions issuedby MT researchers from Bunker-Ramo, IBM, and Itek Corporationfrom the late 1950s through the early1960s. These same claims wererepeated throughout the 1960s to jus-tify U.S. government investment inearly MT (although the governmentshut down funding for MT research fora while in 1966 following the devas-tating ALPAC Report that dismissedthe technology as “hopelessly uneco-nomical” for the foreseeable future.)

Many translators may recall theungainly “FAHQT” acronym tossedaround in the early 1980s, a term com-monly expanded as “fully automatichigh-quality translation,” which was,of course, the explicit goal of MTresearch in that decade. The term“high-quality” implied a level of per-formance quite distinct from “gisting,”with software marketing departmentsclaiming applications and accuracylevels that raised MT to commerciallyviable levels as a possible alternative tohuman translation. (For example, IBMclaimed essential success in 1983using a statistical approach, and tookgreat pride in the fact that their qualitylevel seemed to improve as they fired

more linguists from their staff.) Thedefining characteristic of this era wasthat MT was consistently offered (andclearly over-sold) as a perfectly reasonable alternative to human trans-lation, albeit one with a few bumpsalong the road. These obvious short-comings in the technology were impa-tiently dismissed with a wave of thehand and a promise that the solutionswere just around the corner.Admittedly, the greatest offenders inthis campaign were MT vendor mar-keting departments and the popularmedia, both of which had ulteriormotives in hyping the technology todraw in buyers and readers, respec-tively.

What changed the target market ofMT from “high-quality” to “gisting”was the Internet. Raw MT was born for“gisting,” as you rightly point out, butprior to the World Wide Web, there wasno body of content available electroni-cally that was suitable for fast, easy,and free translation. The low-quality“gisting” application of MT was, inmany ways, a “solution in search of aproblem” before the Internet age. Nowthat raw MT is used so successfully for“gisting,” we must resist the temptationto declare this very limited appli-cation constituted the entire scopeof historical claims for MT.

Having said all this, industrial MTsystems employing controlled Englishas well as pre- and post-editing bytranslators were, of course, success-fully developed and employed by suchcompanies as Caterpillar andSiemens. The public was almost neverexposed to these very focused applica-tions because they were too compli-cated to explain in a sound byte.

This brings us back to the issue ofpublic education and expectations. It isimportant to remember that Will Durstwas seeking a perfect solution toleaping the language barrier when heinterviewed me on the PBS show“Livelyhood.” He was not asking for adevice that “creates a certain degreeof inaccuracy.” He wanted to

know whether there was a technologicalsolution he could use to communicateaccurately and effectively. Theanswer to that question is, of course,“no.” The media’s fascination withMT and other technologies has led thepublic to believe otherwise, which iswhy the question was posed to me inthe first place. Many readers mayrecall Eduard Hovy’s silly predictionin Byte magazine in 1993 that a trans-lating telephone would allow anEnglish-speaking customer to conversein Japanese “within the decade.”Recently, we were treated to BillClinton’s equally mindless predictionin a nationally broadcast State of the Union Address that translatingmachines would soon be available thatcould “translate as fast as you can talk.”How could we expect Will Durst orother members of the public to under-stand that these predictions are simplynonsense? It is critical for ATA to takethe lead in educating the public on thelimits of MT and its proper applica-tions—a task that has not been welladdressed in the past (among otherissues, this misunderstanding of rawMT capabilities has had a seriousimpact on translators’ income). Idecided to use Babelfish to show theweaknesses in any automated systemand to demonstrate the ambiguity andcomplexity of language—importantpoints we should seek to emphasize tothe public. There was also a humorbenefit, which was important to theoverall tenor of the show. Although Irecognize that a round-trip run of histext through the MT engine may nothave portrayed MT at its finest, it wasthe simplest way to show, in English,how those “inaccuracies” would showup to a foreign reader.

On balance, did my comments accu-rately convey that perfect MT wasmany, many years away? I thinkso. Will wanted to know whetherHovy’s Japanese translating telephoneexists today, and, if so, where he couldfind it. The fact is that the public

Continued on p.22


Conferences and Events

Washington, DCTranslators Discussion Group Borders Books and Music18th & L Streets, NW

Meets the second Wednesday of eachmonth from 6:30-8:00 pm at Borders.For more information, please contactLily Liu at [email protected]

La Rochelle, FranceThe Société Française des Traducteurs First Summer Seminar for FinancialTranslatorsJuly 10-12, 2002

In today’s global markets, skilled trans-lators capable of adapting highly spe-cialized financial texts from one lan-guage to another are in short supply.Yet demand is on the rise, as investorsand financial specialists seek accurateinformation in their own language. SFT’s(www.sft.fr) first summer seminar forfinancial translators will bring togetherprofessionals from the financial servicesindustry to provide insights into the waythey operate and their communicationsgoals. For further information, [email protected]; Tel: +33 (0) 1 42 93 58 02.

Vancouver, British ColumbiaXVI World Congress of theInternational Federation of TranslatorsTranslation: New Ideas for a New CenturyAugust 6-10, 2002

Canada is proud to welcome the XVI FITCongress to Vancouver, British Columbia.It kicks off August 6, 2002, with the wel-come reception and on-site registration,and the Congress itself runs three and ahalf days, August 7-10. This is the firsttime in over two decades that theCongress has taken place in NorthAmerica, so we’re happy to continue thetradition of welcoming hundreds of dele-gates from all corners of the world.Recent Congresses have been held inMons, Belgium (1999), Melbourne,Australia (1996), Brighton, England(1993), Belgrade, Yugoslavia (1990), andMaastricht, the Netherlands (1987). Formore information, please visit www.fit-ift.org.htm.

Lincoln, NebraskaNebraska Association for Translators & InterpretersThird Annual Regional Conference“Bringing Down Barriers”Holiday Inn Downtown (Haymarket area)August 15-17, 2002

Who Should Attend? Translators, inter-preters, language professionals, stu-dents of foreign language and interna-tional trade, social services personnel,law enforcement personnel, administra-tors coordinating language access,compliance officers, freelance and staffbilingual service providers.Several registration options are avail-able. Check the website(www.natihq.org) for details.Discounted registration fees for NATImembers and special hotel rates avail-able. To be added to our mailing list,contact [email protected].

Cambridge, England18th Intensive Course in SimultaneousConference Interpretation August 18-31, 2002

Participants will interpret for guestspeakers on a wide range of general andtechnical subjects under authentic con-ference conditions. In addition to thecore curriculum, there will be specializeddiscussions in a variety of fields (forexample, consecutive, on-site translation,use and preparation of texts, booth andstress management, marketing andnegotiation, interpreting approaches toShakespeare and the Bible, etc.), andbriefings on the International Associationof Conference Interpreters, the interna-tional institutions, and the profession.The course languages are English,French, German, Russian, and Spanish.The language of general instruction isEnglish. Early enrollment is recommend-ed. For information, including a detailedcourse brochure and application forms,please contact: Christopher Guichot deFortis; Tel: (+32-2) 654-2080; Fax: (+32-2) 652-5826; E-mail: [email protected].(Note: This course is specificallydesigned for conference interpreters only.)

Slavonice, Czech RepublicSlavonice International Translators Conference 2002September 19-22, 2002

For more information, please contact:Zuzana KulhankovaJana Zizky 2, 378 81 SlavoniceCzech RepublicTel: +420-332-493777 Fax: +420-332-493770 Mobil: +420-605-726432E-mail: [email protected] www.scholaludus.cz

Cambridge, Massachusetts6th Annual Massachusetts MedicalInterpreters Association Conference “Unheard Voices” Cambridge College1000 Massachusetts AvenueOctober 25-26, 2002

For information or to be placed on themailing list, contact either Joy Connellat (617) 626-8133([email protected]) or JohnNickrosz at (617) 636-5212 ([email protected]).

Call for ManuscriptsMultilingual Matters SeriesProfessional Interpreting in the Real World

Suggested topics: Method (field-specific);Procedure (field-specific); Regulations(field-specific); Interpreting Equipment(conference and legal); Education(basics per field, advanced skills perfield, advanced theory per field); Skills(memory retention exercises, note tak-ing, troubleshooting per field, and spe-cific language pair applications). Theseries editor will be pleased to discussproposals with potential authors. Pleasesend them to: c/o Multilingual MattersLtd., Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall,Victoria Road, Clevedon, BS21 7HH, U.K.; or by e-mail to [email protected] for book proposals can befound on our website (www.multilingual-matters.com).


W ith this article we enter thesecond year of the series oninternational certification,

launched in the June 2001 issue of theATA Chronicle. A year ago, my objec-tive was to present readers withabstracts from the numerous lettersand e-mails we received from institu-tional members of ATA, in addition tomembers of the International Feder-ation of Translators (FIT), in responseto our inquiry about certification pro-cedures in their respective countriesand their willingness (or lack thereof)to cooperate with ATA in the area ofaccreditation and certification. I wasplanning to go through the stack ofthe letters, write a few articles, and bedone with it. This undertaking, how-ever, turned out to be quite inter-esting, and the project has taken on alife of its own. As the study enters amore mature stage and as more issuesbecome clearer than at its outset ayear ago, I am actively seeking moreinformation and feedback from offi-cials and members of language organ-izations worldwide.

While the main objective of thestudy—to learn more about certificationand similar programs of non-U.S. pro-fessional organizations for translatorsand interpreters—has not changed, themethod of collecting information andthe horizon of the study have changedsubstantially. Very soon after thelaunch of the study, I realized the risksof presenting information based on asingle source, as was the case with theopening article on the BrazilianABRATES. Since then I have made aneffort to contact as many knowledge-able persons in the area of certificationin the given country as reasonablypossible, and to conduct adequateresearch for each article. To mydelight, the response has been bothpositive and overwhelming, and thestudy has become more objective and

informational. This brings me to theexpanded horizon of the study. I pre-sented some background informationand partial results of the study at theATA conference in Los Angeles lastyear, and I am planning to present onthis topic again at the FIT Congress inVancouver and the next ATA confer-ence in Atlanta. The purpose of thesepresentations is not to describe thestudy and reiterate what has been saidin the pages of the ATA Chronicle.Rather, I am seeking input from the

audience in order to come up withideas as to how to interpret the col-lected information, as well as how tochart the future course of the study.Ultimately, with the help of all thosewho are willing, I would like to con-duct a detailed survey on certificationprocedures in various countries inorder to be able to produce statistically(and otherwise) meaningful results.These results will help us to reexamineour own accreditation process and, Ihope, will provide an impetus formore active cooperation with non-U.S.language organizations.

It is only fitting that we start thesecond year in South America again.For the information presented here, Iam particularly indebted to: BeatrizRodriguez and Graciela Steinberg,president and treasurer of theColegio de Traductores Públicos dela Ciudad de Buenos Aires

(CTPCBA), respectively; EstelaHerrera and Daniela Camozzi, bothATA members, certified translators,and active members of CTPCBA;Graciela Perillo, ATA member, certi-fied translator, former member ofCTPCBA’s Executive Committee, andactive member of CTPCBA; MartaBaduy, member of the Colegio de laProvincia de Córdoba and teacher atthe Facultad de Lenguas of theUniversity of Córdoba; and MiriamGolía and Natascha Ostroumoff, bothATA members, currently serving aspresident and vice-president of theAsociación de Traductores Públicos eIntérpretes de la Provincia de BuenosAires (ATIBA), respectively.

In Argentina, the only way tobecome Traductor Público (i.e.,sworn/legal/certified public translator[“certified public translator” here-inafter]), is to earn a university degree.In order to be admitted to such a pro-gram, prospective students must passan admission language examination.The university programs vary fromfour to five years. Graciela Perillo hascompiled a detailed list of participatinguniversities and relevant syllabi. Thescope of this article does not allow forsuch detailed information, but the datacan be obtained directly from Ms.Perillo at [email protected]. Inmost Argentine universities, thetranslation degree is offered forEnglish and French, although theUniversidad de Buenos Aires offersinstruction in a number of other lan-guages. In the last few years,Portuguese has been added in manyuniversities, both public and private,in support of the MERCOSUR Treaty.

Argentine universities grant profes-sional diplomas, for instance, in med-icine, law, architecture, and, unlikeuniversities in the U.S. and elsewhere,translation. In the translation studiesprogram, students can earn either

International Certification Study: Argentina

By Jiri Stejskal

…In Argentina, the onlyway to become Traductor

Público (i.e., sworn/legal/certified public

translator), is to earn auniversity degree…

➡


International Certification Study: Argentina Continued

a scientific and literary translationdiploma or a public translatordiploma. University courses leading tothe public translator diploma arefocused mainly on legal translation.As such, the syllabi comprise manycourses in law. A public translator canact as a certified public translator oncelicensed by a colegio profesional (pro-fessional board). Colegios, similar toU.S. Bar associations, have been cre-ated through a provincial law passedby province legislature. Registrationwith the colegios enables translators tocertify their translations, but only inthe particular provinces where theseorganizations exist. Only 5 out of the23 provinces have a colegio (BuenosAires, Córdoba, Santa Fe, Catamarca,and, the newest colegio, La Rioja). Inthose provinces where there are nocolegios, translators can apply fortheir “matrícula” at the respectivecourts. Once licensed, certified publictranslators have their own individualstamp and are entitled to vouch for theaccuracy of their translations (a sim-ilar arrangement exists in manyEuropean countries). To work as a sci-entific or technical translator, nolicense is required, and there is no cer-tification program in place.

The largest of the colegios, theColegio de Traductores Públicos dela Ciudad de Buenos Aires, was cre-ated by National Act No. 20,305 of1973, which governs the professionin the City of Buenos Aires. Pursuantto Article 4 of this Act, in order to actas a certified public translator you arerequired:

• To be an Argentine citizen (if nat-uralized, you must have hadArgentine citizenship for at leastfive years);

• To be of age;• To have a university degree

granted by:

1. a national university, or2. a provincial or private univer-

sity duly authorized by theFederal Executive (Ministry ofEducation), or

3. a foreign university (providedthe diploma has been recognizedby a national university); and

• To register with the competentcollegiate/professional body.

Also of interest in terms of legalcertification procedures is Act No.7834, which controls and governs thepractice of certified public translatorsin the province of Córdoba, andwhich has been adopted as a modelby groups of translators in differentprovinces of the country that areworking to become translator associ-ations. Detailed information on thisAct is available from Marta Baduy [email protected].

Upon registration with a colegio,translators take an oath that they willaccurately translate all documents.They are then given a license numberwhich they have to use when signinga statement at the bottom of theirtranslations:

“I, [name], an Argentine CertifiedPublic Translator practicing in[city], license No. [licensenumber], certify and attest that theforegoing is, to the best of myknowledge and ability, a truetranslation into [target language]of the original document in[source language] which I havehad before me. Given under myhand and seal in [city] on [date].”

Certified public translators are con-sidered to be assistants to justice. Whilethey can perform activities in any fieldof translation and interpretation, theyare the only ones authorized to act in anofficial capacity as court assistants,

experts, and/or interpreters. Certifiedtranslations are required in a number ofofficial contexts: personal documents,certificates and diplomas, public deeds,documents that are involved in legalactions, expert witness reports, and alsofor commercial documents such ascontracts, balance sheets, and corporatedocuments (bylaws, etc.). A certifiedtranslation will also be required in cir-cumstances involving other types ofdocuments, such as medical reports orexpert opinions that are part of a legalprocedure or an audit or a claim in aninsurance company.

There are many different organiza-tions for translators and interpretersin Argentina. The umbrella organiza-tion is the Federación Argentina deTraductores, or FAT (ArgentineFederation of Translators). Similar toFIT, it is an association of translationorganizations with no individualmembership. FAT currently does nothave a web presence, and informa-tion on its activities is not readilyavailable. According to BeatrizRodriguez, president of CTPCBA(see below), FAT currently representsmore than 7,000 translators and inter-preters through their respective cole-gios. The Federation was founded byCTPCBA together with three othercolegios, namely those of Córdoba,Santa Fe, and Catamarca.

The colegios are the all-importantorganizations in Argentina when itcomes to certification. The above-mentioned CTPCBA is the oldestcolegio in Argentina, and boastsapproximately 3,500 active membersworking in 34 different languages.The main role of CTPCBA is to rep-resent certified public translators andto investigate, develop, promote, andshare with the public the work andfunction of these professionals. It isthe only body in Buenos Aires thatformalizes member registration in the


profession, administers the resourcesof the association, ensures the strictobservance of professional ethics,and controls and administers the reg-istration of certified public translatorsas supporting technical expertswithin the Argentine justice system inthe City of Buenos Aires. When reg-istered, members of the Colegioagree to abide by the respective codesof ethics. Complaints or claimsregarding professional conduct aredealt with by a Tribunal de Conducta(Ethics Committee).

CTPCBA, a member of FIT, is anonprofit, noncommercial, nonstateassociation of public law, and its rev-enues come from registration/certification fees, annual memberdues, the courses, seminars, and sym-posia it holds, and the authenticationservices it renders. CTPCBA hasorganized three Latin AmericanCongresses on translation and inter-preting in Buenos Aires. Our own TomWest, current ATA president, attendedthe II and III Congresses and was oneof the keynote speakers. CTPCBA’scommitment to professional transla-tion and quality is reflected in a pro-fuse academic training agenda, whichincludes not only courses, seminars,and symposia organized by the dif-ferent CTPCBA committees, but alsoa distance training program, whichincludes translation into Spanish andSpanish for editing. Although distancetraining is designed for Argentinetranslators, CTPCBA is also planningto launch a new program customizedfor translators in the United States.CTPCBA belongs to the CGP(General Professional CoordinatingBoard) and is an active member of theCEPUC (Coordinating Board ofUniversity Profession of the City ofBuenos Aires). During the last threeyears, CTPCBA has also been hostingATA accreditation exam sittings.

CTPCBA is currently in contact withsister organizations in Latin Americain a joint effort to organize the LatinAmerican Regional Center forTranslation. CTPCBA publishes twomagazines, one of them for distribu-tion among its members (also avail-able on CTPCBA’s website), and anacademic magazine, El Lenguaraz,which comes out on a yearly basis. Inaddition, CTPCBA maintains a dis-cussion list, “El Lenguaraz Elec-trónico.” Detailed information onCTPCBA is available at the Colegio’swebsite at www.traductores.org.ar(Spanish only).

Two years ago, the Comisión deInterpretación del CTPCBA (Interpre-tation Committee) was established.One of the objectives of this committeewas to create a list of certified publictranslators who are also certified con-ference interpreters. To be included onthis list, certified public translatorshave to prove they have the appropriatetraining and experience (usually bysubmitting client certificates). Theminimum requirement is 340 points.The maximum number of points onecan get for training is 100 (the numberof points granted for a university inter-preting diploma). The remainingpoints are granted for eight-hour daysof interpreting, with one hour equalingone point. For example, an interpreterwith an interpreting diploma (100points) needs to prove interpretingexperience equaling 30 days (240hours) to reach the target 340 points.

There are just a handful of col-leges where interested parties maystudy interpreting in Argentina,although there are many privateorganizations offering interpretercourses, mostly run by active inter-preters. One such organization, theAsociación de Intérpretes deConferencia de la Argentina, orADICA (Argentine Association of

Conference Interpreters), is a profes-sional association for interpreters ofall languages that has been active formore than 20 years in Argentina andincludes many AIIC (AssociationInternationale des Interprètes deConférence) interpreters. Aside fromprospective members showing thatthey have worked at conferences,together with referrals from two orthree active colleagues, there are norestrictions or certification exams topass to become a member. Furtherinformation on ADICA is available atwww.adica.com.ar.

Among active organizations fortranslators and interpreters in theGreater Buenos Aires area is theAsociación de Traductores Públicos eIntérpretes de la Provincia de BuenosAires, or ATIBA (Association ofCertified Public Translators andInterpreters of the Province of BuenosAires). This association was organizedin 1997 in order to support translators,train them for the corporate world, andassist them in finding a position in thecommunity. ATIBA’s publication,Molinos de Viento, offers interestingarticles on the profession, language-and translation-related news, seminars,news about translation fairs, and allsorts of related activities (contact [email protected]). In orderto prompt translators to use all theelectronic tools available, ATIBA hasstarted a “Translator’s List.” This vir-tual community now has over 300members. All interested parties mayparticipate by submitting inquiries ondifficult terms, language-related queries,and news related to the profession.ATIBA president Miriam Golía, whowas recently invited to give a lectureon present market conditions inArgentina at the II CIATI Inter-national Congress of Translators and

Continued on p.17


I n starting a freelance translationbusiness, there are many externalfactors to consider before moving

forward. This discussion, however,will focus on the internal factors to beevaluated and cultivated in order tobe successful in the field of freelancetranslation. The metrics and processof establishing a successful businessare not often applied to the businessof freelance translation. This articleis about the power of making a deci-sion, establishing goals, and fol-lowing through. Ultimately, thesesame principles apply to any businessor personal goals you want to reach.

The first step is to answer a largerquestion—if you were able to createanything in your life, what would thatbe (Ref. 1). Take one day in this ideallife and summarize it. How would youfeel? Where would you be? Whatwould you be doing? Who else is withyou during this ideal day? Write outthese details in a paragraph or two.Include feelings, places, people, activ-ities, and times. For example, “I wakeup early and go outside in my lushgarden in California. It is summertime,I feel relaxed, happy. Am plantingflowers. During the late morning, mychildren go outside and are playingwith each other and their neigh-bors.…” Keep this written documentsomewhere and refer to it frequently.

Next step, how do you link up yourideal day with your business as a free-lance translator? What is the connec-tion between your ideal day/life andyour freelance business? Maybe partof your ideal day involves working inyour study on the translation ofGoethe’s letters to his mother. Maybeyour freelance business allows you theflexibility of being home in the morn-ings to complete the activities of yourideal day. Maybe your freelance trans-lation work brings you the money topurchase the boat you needed in order

to complete your ideal day/life sailingalong the Pacific coastline. Forexample, going back to your ideal dayin the garden, the connection to thefreelance work might sound like this:“My successful freelance translationwork four evenings a week allows methe freedom to work at home, outside,in the garden during the day, and playwith my children. It also brings me theincome I need to support my lifestyleand purchase the exotic plants andshrubs I always wanted.”

Once you determine the connec-tion between your ideal day and yourfreelance career, get specific aboutthe career (Ref. 2). Write out a fewparagraphs where you include:

1) What is the business?2) Where is the market for this

business?3) Who is the competition and how

do you differentiate yourself?4) What is the infrastructure needed

to succeed in this business?5) What are your financial goals

(monthly, quarterly, annually)?

Keep the initial answers simple.For each of the ideas above, you cango into more detail separately. Forexample, say your business is in thearea of freelance software localiza-tion translation for Latin AmericanSpanish. Your competition may beother translators, web services, oragencies that do software translation.If you get more detailed about this,however, you may find that the realcompetition for you is located in

Colombia and Peru, where smallgroups of freelance translators areoffering the same service atextremely discounted prices. Or youdiscover that ProZ offers a forum forfreelance translators that poses athreat to your business due to theextremely low rates. This knowledgehelps you determine how to differen-tiate yourself in terms of quality, flex-ibility, location, etc.

Once you have written your gen-eral business plan that includes finan-cial goals, determine the daily, weekly,and monthly activity you need to do inorder to reach these goals. Write asummary of these goals and refer tothem frequently. For example, say youdetermine that you need 25K in rev-enue from translation agencies, andthat you will get this business bycalling agencies directly and speakingto the decision makers and thensending in your résumé. Evaluate howmany agencies you will have to reachin a day/week/month to allow you towork with X number of agencies toreach 25K in revenue. The key pointhere is you want to break down andquantify your weekly, and even daily,activity so that you can successfullymanage and regulate your own activityto reach your goals. If a large part ofyour day is spent on activities that donot bring you to your goals, you maywant to re-evaluate. The activity num-bers will have to be adjusteddepending on the market, youranalysis, and change.

Along the way, you want to con-stantly refer to your initial summaryof your ideal day (Ref. 3). Keep theconnection between what you want inyour life and how this freelancetranslation business is part of thesolution. Read and reread your sum-mary of goals frequently.

You may discover that after goingpart way through this process that

…The only thing keepingyou from reaching your

goals is yourself…

Marketing Myself, I Can If I Want To

By Michael Klinger


you actually do not want to be doingtranslation in the area you havechosen (Ref. 4). It is never too late tochange your subject or focus. Beclear that you are changing subjectsor your approach, not because youare afraid of reaching your goals orare too discouraged, but because youare not interested in the subject itself.

Also, once you determine whatyour personal goals are, you will wantto have a network of people who cansupport and help you realize thesegoals (Ref. 5). Your support networkcan take many forms. You may simplywant to meet with a local organizationof like-minded professionals to beable to share your experiences andnetwork. You may want to create yourown personal network of 7-10 indi-

viduals who you value. Each of youmay come from different industriesand backgrounds. You can meet andbrainstorm together on how you canall meet your different personal goals.You may need only a network of oneperson (a mentor or a significantother). Whatever form your supportgroup takes, it is important that youestablish one as you embark on yourcareer as a freelance translator.

Now that you have determinedyour goals and the related activitiesneeded to accomplish them, set up atimeline and DO IT! The only thingkeeping you from reaching yourgoals is yourself. You are the one cre-ating this career and it is in your bestinterest to implement the activitiesthat will help you reach your goals.

References1. Bangs, David Jr. 1989. The

Business Planning Guide. UpstartPublishing Company.

2. Hill, Napoleon. “17 Principles ofUniversal Success.” Nightingale-Conant Corp. cassette.

3. Sher, Barbara. 1989. Wishcraft.

4. Stuberg, Robert. “Creating YourUltimate Destiny.” Nightingale-Conant Corp. cassette.

5. Wilson, Larry, and SpencerJohnson. 1986. The One MinuteSales Person. Avon Books.

Interpreters in Saõ Paulo, Brazil, heldin May 2001, will be happy to supplyfurther details (contact [email protected]). Further information onATIBA is also available atwww.atiba.org.ar (Spanish only).Among other active regional organiza-tions for translators and interpreters isthe Asociación Argentina de Traduc-tores e Intérpretes (AATI), which rep-resents non-certified public translators(scientific, literary, technical) in theBuenos Aires. AATI is also a memberof FIT.

In the next issue, we will examinethe certification procedures in Norway.As the editor of this series, I encouragereaders to submit any relevant infor-mation concerning non-U.S. certifica-tion or similar programs, as well ascomments on the information pub-lished in this series, to my e-mailaddress at [email protected].

International Certification Study:Argentina Continued from p.15

The Kentucky Translators and Interpreters Association (KTIA) P.O. Box 7468 Louisville, KY 40257-0468Tel: 502-548-3988E-mail: [email protected]: Laura Hardy, president

Upper Midwest Translators and Interpreters Association(UMTIA)Coordinator,Minnesota Translation Laboratory218 Nolte Center315 Pillsbury Drive SEMinneapolis, MN 55455Tel: (612) 625-3096 • Fax: (612) [email protected]

Check Out Our Newest Group Listings!(see pages 54-55 for more chapter and group information)


A fter his work covering the Iranhostage crisis, newscaster TedKoppel was asked to run for

the presidency. He declined by sayingthat if he had to stop asking questionsand start answering them, he wouldlose his power.

Understand that the purpose ofasking a question is to assist both thequestioner and those being asked infinding answers. They are meant toassist, not demean, and will helpeveryone involved to find balance. St.Francis (and Steven Covey) said“Seek to understand [rather] than to beunderstood.” You can’t do this withoutasking appropriate questions. Just theact of asking makes other people feelthat you care, and that you want tolisten to what they have to say. It cre-ates a positive feeling in people, andwill allow everyone to work togetherto find the best answers.

When someone goes off track, aska direct question like “Is that whatyou really meant?” or “Is this goingwhere you had intended?” This is agreat way to help people stay on theiroriginal path. Use questions to helpothers find answers for themselves,rather than answering for them. Thiscreates self-esteem and empowerspeople to do more for themselves. Italso frees you to do your job, ratherthan take the time to help them dotheirs. Everyone gets lost from timeto time. A great way to avoid embar-rassment and gain some time togather your thoughts is to asksomeone an open-ended question like“What do you think of this or that?”

Questions will help you deal withdifficult people. Engage the other partyin helping you solve the issue. Asking“How can we solve this together?” is agreat way to turn a potential conflictinto a teamwork situation. It will

make the other person think in a dif-ferent way, and they won’t feel likethey have to deal with the situationalone. Knowing you’ve got anadvisor or a helping hand can makethe difference between solving aproblem or making it bigger.

What do you do if someone is con-fronting you? Ask them a question.Asking a very simple and pointedquestion like “Why?” is a great way toturn the tables and put yourself in thepower position. Learn to ask these

questions in a nonaccusatory manner.Difficult questions make most peoplefeel uncomfortable. It’s best to learnhow to ask them in a way that helps theperson you are asking feel safe aboutgiving you an answer. That being said,sometimes difficult questions are theonly way to get the answers you need.If the question is going to be difficult,try to ask it in an environment that iscomfortable to both you and the otherperson. Don’t begin with what theother party may feel is an inquisition ina public or uncomfortable place. Also,do your best not to ask difficult ques-tions over the telephone; give them thecourtesy of a face-to-face conversa-tion. Besides, you will want to lookinto their eyes to see if they’re beingtotally honest.

Instead of saying “NO” to a clientor customer, ask them a question, findout more about what they need or

want. It can change their (and your)perspective on the situation. It canalso turn an unhappy customer into acheerleader for your company. Askingappropriate questions makes a personfeel that you care about what is both-ering them. Marshal Fields said,“Customers, when given a choice ofwhere they spend their money, invari-ably go back to a place where theyhave been made to feel special.”

When you want people to thinkabout what they’re doing, ask an eval-uation type question. To build strongerrelationships with team members, askopen-ended questions about yourcompany. Get their advice on howthings can be improved upon. Just theact of asking will make them feel thatyou care about their opinions. Doingthis on a regular basis creates astronger bond between your company,your team members, and you. It willalso give you insights into your busi-ness that you may never get otherwise.A great way to do this is with a company evaluation. This should bean annual process where you ask company-specific questions of yourentire staff. This is a powerful process,and you will learn a great deal aboutyour business, as well as your team.

For additional information aboutthe awesome power of doing a company evaluation, including adozen questions you should ask,send an e-mail with the word“Evaluation” in the subject box to [email protected].

(Note: More information can be foundat www.bartongoldsmith.com, or bycontacting Dr. Barton Goldsmith,Goldsmith Consulting, P.O. Box 4502,Westlake Village, CA 91361; Toll-free: 866-522-7866.)

…The purpose of asking aquestion is to assist boththe questioner and those

being asked in findinganswers…

The Awesome Power of Asking the Right Questions

By Dr. Barton Goldsmith


C ertification in the professionallife of a court interpreter is ofenormous significance because

it is almost equivalent to licensing. Inspite of some district judges who stillrefuse to hire certified interpreters,certification, for the most part, keepsthose who do not possess it fromworking in many federal courts andfrom enjoying the prestige it conferson court interpreters in this country.Federal court interpreter certificationin the U.S. was conducted by theUniversity of Arizona for over 20years, but starting this year, theFederal Court Interpreters’ Certifi-cation Examination will no longer beoffered by the University of Arizona’sFederal Court Interpreter Certifica-tion Project. Instead, this examinationwill be conducted by a consortiumconsisting of the National Center forState Courts (for the oral part),Second Language Testing, Inc. (forthe written part), and CooperativePersonnel Services (for test adminis-tration and dissemination of results).As a result, the federal test is under-going interesting changes for all con-cerned, but in particular for those ofus in the National Association ofJudiciary Interpreters and Translators(NAJIT) who have been involved inthe creation of The SSTI/NAJITTranslation and Interpretation NationalCertification Examination.

The federal certification programthat originated with the “CourtInterpreters Act” of October 28,1978, resulted in a rigorous writtenand oral test that withstood courtchallenges (Seltzer vs. Foley, 1980)and became recognized as a valid andreliable means of providing compe-tent interpreters for the federalcourts. But the creators of that exam-ination (Leeth, 1981; Arjona, 1985;Dueñas, 1991; Baca, 1992) havepointed out some of its limitations.

These include: 1) that the test onlyguarantees the courts that “the qualityof the interpretation services meetsthe minimum standards necessary tofacilitate communication in a federalcourt of law”; 2) that it makes no pro-vision for revalidating one’s certifica-tion; and 3) that, since it lacks atranslation component, the examina-tion does not provide a formal assur-ance that the translations the courtinterpreter is called upon to do meeteven the minimum standards set by

the interpretation test. According toDueñas (1991): “the ATA accredita-tion program is a very commendableeffort that has alleviated the qualitycontrol problem for translationclients; however, it is strictly a volun-tary program. No doubt governmententities will have to repeat the samesteps they have taken with respect tocourt interpreting; that is, to mandatea certification procedure that willleave no room for doubt about thequalifications of the professionaltranslator” (1991: 562). The 2001-2002 edition of the federal test stillwill not include a translation section,so there is no end to the complaintvoiced 10 years ago by Dueñas.

At the time of this writing, thewritten portion of the federal examhas already been pilot-tested (inSeptember 2001), and is scheduled tobe given in December; the oral portionis scheduled for March 2002. As

described during the NAJIT Conferencein Chicago in May 2001 by consortiumrepresentatives William Hewitt, CharlesStansfield, and Marike Van der Heide ofthe Administrative Office of the U.S.Courts, the examination will have asimilar degree of difficulty to previousversions, because “it is not appropriateto make major changes.” Their decisionis obviously based on their situation andneeds, and, coincidentally, reaffirms thedecision made by NAJIT to develop itsown Certificate of Competency inJudiciary Interpretation. NAJIT’s cer-tificate will differ significantly from thecertification now available through theAdministrative Office of the U.S.Courts, the National Consortium ofState Courts, or the various states thatnow offer certification.

In a report given to the NAJITmembership, Society for the Study ofTranslation and Interpretation (SSTI)President Mirta Vidal (2000) wrote:“The NAJIT exam will be differentfrom the federal and state courtexams that already exist. Ours is con-ceived to encompass every aspect ofthe work performed daily by thoseinvolved in judicial interpretation.The exam will cover in- and out-of-court work that may occur in criminaland civil cases, with a wide range ofmedical, commercial, or technicalterminology, involving subjects asvaried as divorce, real estate transac-tions, or bank fraud. Of course, notevery imaginable subject that maycome up in the course of our workcan be covered in a single exam. Butour aim is for the content to be suffi-ciently representative so that a personwho performs well can be deemedtruly competent to work in thisfield.... Its purpose is to provide uswith a valid credential of competencythat can become the accepted stan-dard for the profession nationwide,and give validation to the highly ➡

…This credential willdocument the possession

of the specializedknowledge and skills

needed to be a forensicinterpreter in any setting…

The SSTI/NAJIT Translation and InterpretationNational Certification ExaminationBy Dagoberto Orrantia


qualified individuals who have nothad a way to measure their own per-formance until now. It will not pro-vide a credential for employment inthe state or federal courts, but NAJITis striving for something different,broader in scope, embracing theentire interpreting community.”

The task faced by the SSTI isdaunting: ultimately to create a uni-versal credentialing examination inthe various languages representedwithin NAJIT’s membership (therewere 69 languages listed in the 1999-2000 Directory of the Association).Because Spanish is the languagemost heavily represented among themembers, it was agreed that the firsttest would be in Spanish. This willhelp to generate funds for the devel-opment of examinations in other lan-guages. The Spanish-English examwill serve as the prototype for thedevelopment of exams in other lan-guages, permitting NAJIT to moveforward to meet the credentialingneeds of all its membership.

One of the first problems the SSTIfaced was determining the scope of theexamination. The solution was to con-duct a task survey for judiciary inter-preters prepared by the SSTI Board.This was done during September andOctober 2000. Three performancedomains were identified in the survey:sight translation, consecutive interpre-tation, and simultaneous interpretation.Survey respondents were asked toevaluate each task according to itsimportance, criticality, and frequency.Importance (rated from “not impor-tant” to “extremely important”) is thedegree to which knowledge and abilityis essential to the job performance of aminimally qualified judiciary inter-preter. Criticality is the degree towhich adverse effects (evaluated from“no harm” to “extreme harm”) couldresult if the minimally qualified

interpreter was not able to perform atask in the performance domain.Frequency is the extent to which inter-preters perform tasks associated witheach performance domain (rated from“never” to “constantly”). The surveyshowed that simultaneous interpretinghad the highest importance and thehighest frequency, while consecutivehad the highest criticality. The surveyalso showed that court interpreters per-form a variety of duties that go beyondthe usual courtroom instructions,arguments, and question-and-answerexaminations. These tasks includedsuch activities as interpreting at poly-graph examinations and medical inter-views and sight-translating contracts.

The importance of simultaneousinterpreting in court is well estab-lished, as is the high degree of skilland knowledge required to carry outthis seemingly impossible task.Candidates taking the oral compo-nent of the New Jersey State testfailed the simultaneous portion insuch high numbers that they are nowfirst given this part to weed out thosewho cannot perform acceptably. TheSSTI/NAJIT simultaneous inter-preting portion of the exam differsfrom the federal and state testsbecause it is bidirectional; that is, thecandidate must interpret fromEnglish into Spanish and fromSpanish into English. The rate ofspeed of the four-minute passagesthat are to be simultaneously inter-preted is 140 words per minute. Thequestion of whether the speed of thesimultaneous interpreting test shouldbe based on the number of words perminute as determined by syllabledensity (Zoubek, 1963) was dis-cussed. This was ultimately rejectedin favor of a straightforward wordcount because, as researchers havefound, a word in one language maybe translated into another using a

phrase or a sentence (Setton, 1999).The passages are prerecorded and thecandidate’s rendition is recorded forsubsequent scoring. Interrater relia-bility is better preserved when theobservers listen to recorded rendi-tions. “Writtenness” is often a char-acteristic of legal discourse, and amore important factor than the speedof delivery. The texts are selectedfrom transcripts of oral renditions,but are not limited to strictly forensicmaterials, since they may includemedical and financial texts.

Consecutive interpretation issometimes avoided by court inter-preters who are fearful of exposingtheir inability to interpret completelyand accurately. Justifiably, it receivedthe highest criticality rating in thesurvey, because interpreters who areunable to properly transfer the wordsof the examiner or the responses ofthe witness may cause the latter toappear more or less culpable, therebyharming the impartiality of the pro-ceedings. Working memory, note-taking skills, and the ability to workunder pressure are sorely taxed inforensic consecutive interpreting.The SSTI/NAJIT examination, whichincludes criminal as well as civil,financial, and medical texts, requiresthe candidate to interpret consecu-tively at least two utterances ofbetween 50 and 65 words. The candi-date is allowed to request two repeti-tions at any time during the exercise.This portion of the examination is pre-recorded, thus solving the problem ofintentional or unintentional bias, oneof the difficulties of administering andgrading performance examinations(Shimberg, 1981: 1140). The fol-lowing are representative samples ofthis test:

Q: What other symptoms did you have?Did you have pain in your neck?

The SSTI/NAJIT Translation and Interpretation National Certification Examination Continued


A: El dolor lo sentía más que nada enel brazo.

Q: Did the intensity of the painchange? In other words, some-times was it worse than others?

A: Sí, era peor cuando usaba el brazoderecho.

Q: Of these symptoms that you justdescribed as a constant pain in yourright arm, did they change signifi-cantly in some way after that? Inother words, you said that yourcondition leveled off approxi-mately six months after the surgery.After that, was there a time whenyour symptoms changed again?

A: No recuerdo exactamente la fecha,pero en algún momento antes deesta última operación de 1999 fueque paulatinamente me puse peor.

Q: And you—strike that. Can you tellus how you got from Colombia tothe United States?

A: De Colombia—de Bogotá me fui aMéxico, del Distrito Federal mefui a Tijuana, de Tijuana a SanIsidro, de San Isidro a San Diego,y de San Diego a Nueva York, conuna escala en Chicago.

Q: And you had saved your ownmoney to make this trip?

A: Sí, cuando era chico, cuando hicemi primera comunión, cuandotenía diez años, me regalaron unavaquilla, y la vaquilla creció ytuvo otras vaquillas y esasvaquillas parieron sus propiosbecerros, y entonces así fue comopude conseguir mi pasaje de aviónpara los Estados Unidos.

Q: I think you indicated upon directexamination that you bought thesebuildings from the proceeds ofyour legitimate enterprises, thejewelry store and the appliancestore, is that correct?

A: Sí, señor.

Q: Did you buy these buildingsstrictly, exclusively from the pro-ceeds of the jewelry store and theappliance store?

A: Fue un enganche muy pequeñoque di por los edificios.

Q: When you negotiated with thebank in 1998, you were negoti-ating for a loan based on buyingall three buildings, is that correct?

A: Los tres edificios de una vez, ycinco meses después hubo quehacer otro pago de cincuenta mil.

Q: And I assume you had to put this upwith a certified check or a cashier’scheck or cash, is that correct?

Sight translation is bidirectional inforensic settings. Although it gener-ally will require the interpreter tosight-translate typical court docu-ments such as releases, complaints,indictments, and bonds, there may besurprises at times. These couldinclude documents (such as a floridallocution or a notarial affidavit froma Spanish-speaking country) whichcontain extremely formal language,or instances of low-register (such as ahighly informal letter from a relativeof the accused to the judge, or from adefendant to a friend), or the tran-script of a surveillance audiotape. Inthe SSTI/NAJIT examination, thecandidate is allowed five minutes tocomplete the sight translation of a250-word legal document such as aninsurance form, a confession, a tran-script, or an arrest report.

No domain in the survey was iden-tified for tape transcription, an impor-tant aspect of the work done by courtinterpreters, and where they are mostoften called upon to testify as expertwitnesses. With the demands this taskplaces on the transcriber/translator interms of the required knowledge ofdifferent geographical or socialdialects, the auditory difficulties that

result from subreptitious recordingand poor quality recorders, and thehigh possibility of being called to thewitness stand to be questioned, it wasdeemed too difficult to evaluate in asurvey context. Transcribing andtranslating surveillance tapes callsupon a different set of knowledge andskills (to say nothing of the need foraccess to professional-quality audiorecording and playback equipment),and it may very well be that anothertest is needed for this type of work.One solution might be to have thecandidate listen to a taped conversa-tion and then be asked multiple-choicequestions regarding its content.

The SSTI/NAJIT written exami-nation will ascertain whether the can-didate possesses the necessaryencyclopedic knowledge of thesource and target language, and thespecialized knowledge of his profes-sion that is necessary to work effec-tively in forensic settings. Thewritten part of the test includesEnglish and Spanish sections onantonyms and synonyms (with nouns,verbs, and adjectives); analogies(identifying a characteristic, degree,function, cause and effect, class tomember, or part to whole); grammarand syntax; reading comprehensionpassages taken from the humanities,natural sciences, and social sciences;and idioms and proverbs. Thewritten part also includes sectionson the ethics of forensic interpretingand passages for written translationtaken from the legal, medical, andfinancial fields.

From the start, the question ofassuring reliability and validity forthe NAJIT test was fundamental, andDr. Michael Bunch, of MeasurementIncorporated (MI), and the membersof the SSTI Board of Directors dweltat length on this topic. MI and SSTIcoordinated the lengthy process ➡

believes such devices already exist. It isour duty as translators and languageprofessionals to set this record straight.

Kevin HendzelATA Public Relations Co-Chair

[email protected]

A Linguistic SubplotI got a kick out of Chris Durban’s

remarks in April’s “Onionskin” aboutthe portrayal of translators and inter-preters on TV. It reminded me of howmy daughter Jeanie and I some yearsago (she was a translator herself at thetime) reacted to the passage in FrancoZeffirelli’s TV series “Jesus ofNazareth” where Judas Iscariot, by

way of introduction, says he is “atranslator of documents.” Though notvery religious myself, much less a bib-lical scholar, I do believe now, as I didthen, that it is nothing but an inventionby the screenwriter. In fact, it is a basecanard. I find nothing in the Scripturesto back it up.

So I exclaimed to Jeanie, referringto Zeffirelli, “Why that SOB! Thatpseudo-proletarian SOB!” Becausethe other Apostles, you see, tend tohave less arcane, more workaday andtherefore, perhaps, more trustworthyoccupations. It is Judas the “trans-lator of documents” who turns out tobe the archetypal traitor and Bad Guy

(arguably a bogus rap, since he was akind of tool in the divine scheme, orso I’m told; but let that go).

But now I learn that the writingcredits go to Zeffirelli himself, tosomeone named Suso Cecchi D’Amico,and to Anthony Burgess, the witty andcelebrated novelist who was also, coin-cidentally, an accomplished translator.And I bet it was Burgess who inventedthat phony bit of fluff. I can just picturehis wicked grin as he turns the familiarold Italian chestnut on its head:“Traditore - traduttore.”

Kim [email protected]


of selecting, gathering, and orientingtest item writers, item and contentreviewers, examiners, pilot testscorers, standard setters, and opera-tional test scorers. Each of thesegroups’ tasks is crucial to the suc-cessful creation of the exam. Theitem writers were asked to produce asufficient number of items for threeversions or forms of their part of thetest. After thorough evaluation by theitem and content reviewers, three ver-sions of the exam were settled on tobe pilot-tested during the 2001NAJIT Conference. Pilot test scorersmet for 10 days in August, and theirevaluations were used to generate thetwo forms of the written exam whichwere administered at the ATA 42ndAnnual Conference. The oral portionof the test is scheduled for May 2002at NAJIT’s 23rd Annual Meeting andEducational Conference.

This is a novel and challengingventure for NAJIT. The standards setare high and the SSTI/NAJIT exami-nation will identify those individualswho have met them. This credential

will document the possession of thespecialized knowledge and skillsneeded to be a forensic interpreter inany setting. Until a licensing law ispromulgated for forensic interpreters,this credential will do much to assurethe public that interpreting in thecourts is being done faithfully andaccurately.

ReferencesArjona, Etilvia. 1985. “The Court

Interpreters Certification TestDesign.” In Lucía Elías-Olivares,et al., eds. Spanish Language Useand Public Life in the UnitedStates. New York: MoutonPublishers. 181-200.

Baca, Edward J. 1992. “Certificationof Interpreters in AdditionalLanguages.” Court AdministrationBulletin. October 1992, 5.

Dueñas González, Roseann; VictoriaF. Vásquez; and Holly Mikkelson.1991. Fundamentals of CourtInterpretation: Theory, Policy, and

Practice. Durham, NC: CarolinaAcademic Press.

Leeth, Jon. 1981. “Remarks of JonLeeth, Special Assistant to theAssistant Director of theAdministrative Office of the U.S.Courts.” C.I.T.A. Monograph I.New York: Court Interpreters andTranslators Association.

Setton, Robin. 1999. SimultaneousInterpretation: A Cognitive-Pragmatic Analysis. Philadelphia:John Benjamins.

Shimberg, Benjamin. 1981. “Testingfor Licensure and Certification.”American Psychologist. Vol. 36,No. 10, 1138-1146.

Vidal, Mirta. 2000. “NAJITCertification on the Way.” Proteus,Vol. 8, No. 3, 1, 3-4.

Zoubek, Charles E. 1963. SpeedDictation. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.

The SSTI/NAJIT Translation and Interpretation National Certification Examination Continued

Letters to the Editor Continued from p.11


B y any measure, the localizationprocess and industry is stillyoung. Evidence: try telling

someone what you do for a living bysimply stating, “I am a localizationprofessional.”You will be met by blankstares, followed by requests for clarifi-cation. A long explanation will ensue,at the end of which you will hear, “Oh,you mean you do translation.”

Even within the industry, now atleast 15 years young, the debate stillrages over the use of the terms local-ization, globalization, and interna-tionalization. One thing is certain:translation and translators, many ofthem freelance contractors, form anessential part of the process and theindustry. Another certainty: tobecome mature and cohesive, thelocalization industry needs dedicatedand energetic leadership that repre-sents and gives voice to the widerange of professionals, includingtranslators, who work in the industry.

In an essay published by Multi-lingual Computing and Technology(issue #31, April/May 2000), ReinardSchaller wrote: “A strong industryassociation is necessary for localiza-tion to gain long-denied recognition asan industry in its own right.” Thedirector of the Localization ResearchCentre at the University of Limerick,Ireland, concluded: “What is needed isfor somebody to take on the initiativeand lead.”

Ricardo Erb, a seasoned localiza-tion professional, took Schaller’swords to heart. He, too, saw a need forleadership and, more, a professionalnetwork that might represent and sup-port individual professionals and free-lancers from the wide range ofdisciplines that make localization pos-sible. In the early spring of 2001, withthe support of like-minded colleagues,Erb founded the Professional Associ-ation of Localization (PAL) and

defined its mission. This missionexplicitly acknowledges the impor-tance of translators:

To provide its members with:Structured education and training;standardization and best practices;information about translationtrends, tools, and career opportu-nities; discussion forums; and rep-resentation in the fields oflocalization, internationalization,and globalization.

PAL intends to serve and representthose who prepare software anddocumentation for the world. Tosupport its member translators,localizers, internationalizers, andglobalizers, PAL assembles andprovides information, organizesprofessional events, and serves asan advocate for member concerns.

Anyone who has ever participatedin the birth of a new organization,especially one that relies on theenergy and commitment of volun-teers, knows that the process isarduous and sometimes very painful.The birth of PAL is no different. Theresults, however, are beginning tobear fruit.

In the past year, PAL has focusedon some of the more knotty infra-structural challenges of a start-upassociation. For example, acquiringformal and legal status, ironing outgovernance issues, and determininghow best to fulfill its stated mission.

The organization has achieved somesuccess in each of these areas.

At the end of February, PALachieved formal legal status as a non-profit international corporation. Thegoverning body now includesSuzanne Topping as president. PAL’sdirectors are Nancy A. Locke (chair),Marilyn Mason (vice-chair), RicardoErb, and Dorinda Hale. Efforts areunderway to further build the leader-ship in order to tackle the myriadchallenges ahead. Finally, PAL’s mis-sion has informed the creation of ninefocus areas:

• Education and training;• Employment information;• Events and conferences;• Online resources;• Networking and information

exchange;• Tools, techniques, and trends;• Standards;• Association services; and• Industry representation and

alliances.

To offer such an ambitious arrayof services, PAL is committed toexpanding its membership andencouraging active participation inevery area of its operations through awide grassroots volunteer base. So,while PAL cannot yet offer all theservices it hopes to in the future, itcan offer new members a real oppor-tunity to shape that future.

Successful quality localizationrequires the participation of a diverseteam of professionals. Yet, so often,each part of the team is isolated fromthe other, being focused on their spe-cific part of the process and thus unsureor unaware of what the other teammembers are up to. Frequently, transla-tors, because they are freelancers and

…To become mature andcohesive, the localizationindustry needs dedicated

and energetic leadership…

The Professional Association of Localization

By Nancy A. Locke

Continued on p.37


I t’s another busy day when thephone on a Chinese translator’sdesk rings. Familiar questions are

asked…

“Can you translate a document intoMandarin (or Cantonese)?”[These are spoken dialects, not appli-cable for general written translationpurposes…]

“Can you translate this documenta-tion into Chinese?”[Yes, but which form do you need:Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chi-nese, or both?]

“Does it take longer or cost more if Iwant both Simplified and TraditionalChinese? I heard you just push abutton after one version is translatedto create the second version, right?”[Sigh…Okay, let’s start from thebeginning…]

To properly respond to these ques-tions, translation users must firstunderstand the meanings behind theterms “Simplified Chinese,” “Tradi-tional Chinese,” “Mandarin,” and“Cantonese.” In this article, we intendto help translation users gain a greaterunderstanding of these issues as theyrelate to today’s Chinese translationenvironment. For the purposes of thisarticle, we will consider English asthe source language and Chinese asthe intended target language.

BackgroundWhat is usually referred to as

“Chinese” is in fact the language ofChina’s largest nationality, the Hans.The spoken form of Chinese hasmany different geographic dialects,including eight major areas: NorthChina (northern dialect); Jiangsu-Zhejiang (Wu dialect); Hunan (Hunandialect); Jiangxi (Jiangxi dialect);

Kejia (Kejia dialect); northern Fujian(northern Fujian dialect); southernFujian (Fujian dialect); and Guang-dong (Guangdong dialect, orCantonese). Of the entire Chinese-speaking population, about 70% speakthe northern dialect. This is oftenknown as Mandarin, widely consid-ered to be the “official” dialect.Despite the multitude of spoken formsof Chinese, there is actually only one

non-alphabetic Chinese writingsystem composed of more than 40,000characters, of which only 3,000-6,000characters are used on a daily basis.The vocabulary and grammar struc-ture of this writing system is essen-tially the same for all dialects. Theprimary difference lies in the pronun-ciation of the written characters.

Written Chinese characters firstappeared as logogriphs on oracle bonesfrom the Shang Dynasty (around 1400B.C.), and later as pictographs onancient bronze vessels. Although theappearance of these characters haschanged significantly, the grammaticalrules and the writing system in generalhave essentially retained their basicfeatures through the ages. Despite theevolvement of Chinese characters fromcomplex pictographs into characterscomposed of strokes of a much simplernature, Chinese still remains a lan-guage that is relatively difficult to learn,read, and write.

As previously mentioned, Chinesecharacters have undergone constant

simplification at the grassroots levelever since their first appearance over3,000 years ago. Although govern-ment standardizations of Chinesecharacters may be traced back asearly as the Qin Dynasty (221-207B.C.), the most aggressive and ambi-tious language reform project inChinese history was undertaken bythe People’s Republic of China(Mainland China) in the post-1949era, when the communist governmentcame to power and the former KMTgovernment moved to Taiwan. TheChinese Communist Party’s (CCP)Committee for Chinese LanguageReform was founded in 1952 forthree main purposes. First, to unifyand simplify the language byreducing the number of strokes inChinese characters. Second, to stan-dardize Mandarin as the officialnational spoken language. Third, tointroduce a phonetically basedalphabet. In 1956, the Committeeunveiled the Scheme of SimplifyingChinese Characters, which containedsome 2,236 simplified characters.

Out of the entire set of Chinesecharacters (over 40,000), only 3,000-6,000 characters are used in everydaylife. It is very important to understandthat the 2,236 simplified characterscontained in the Scheme ofSimplifying Chinese Characters areamong those 3,000-6,000 characters indaily use. As a result, those charactersthat are less commonly used undergovery little change. Furthermore, a con-siderable portion (about 10%-20%) ofthe 2,236 simplified characters are notnewly simplified or newly createdcharacters. They have been used by theChinese people for years, but have notyet been standardized or made official.The Scheme of Simplifying ChineseCharacters just endorsed these charac-ters as official or standard characters.The simplification for the remaining

Simplified vs. Traditional Chinese: What Every Translation Agency Should KnowBy Jessie Lu and Claire Liu

…Out of the entire set ofChinese characters (over

40,000), only 3,000-6,000characters are used in

everyday life…


part of the 2,236 characters istwofold: 1) to reduce the number ofcharacters (by combining two ormore complex characters in one sim-plified character, mainly through theelimination of complex variants); and2) to reduce the number of the strokesrequired to compose a complex char-acter while at the same time retainingits basic form. For example, the com-plex character (turtle, 20 strokes)is simplified to (turtle, 7 strokes).Writing the complex character for“turtle” is akin to drawing a turtle: avery time-consuming task!

The simplified characters promul-gated in 1956 were soon usedthroughout Mainland China in alltextbooks, newspapers, publications,documents, etc. Other important partsof Chinese language reform includedthe creation of a Chinese alphabeticsystem of writing (known as Pin Yin)to facilitate the learning of Chinesecharacters and to help unify pronun-ciation. In addition, a nationwidecampaign to popularize Mandarinwas part of the reform. These topicsare beyond the scope of the currentdiscussion, but were important lin-guistic historical events.

Since 1949, the complex forms ofChinese characters (known asTraditional Chinese characters) havepersisted in Taiwan and Hong Kong,as these areas were under the rule ofthe former Chinese (the KMT) andBritish governments, respectively.Mandarin is the official language inTaiwan, while Cantonese is the

spoken language that is dominant inHong Kong. However, one shouldkeep in mind that both China andTaiwan (or even Hong Kong) use asignificant number of the same char-acters in their writing. This is becausepeople in Taiwan and Hong Kongwill most likely recognize all butabout one-third of the characters thatare newly created or simplified inChina for daily use.

Chinese Encoding SystemsSo how are the differences

between Simplified Chinese andTraditional Chinese “translated” intoa technical language (i.e., how arethey represented on the computer)?Does one need a localized version ofan operating system to view, edit, andprint Chinese documents? If not, whatare the alternatives? To answer thesequestions, we need to have somebasic understanding about “charactersets” or “encoding systems.” Mostkeyboards are designed for one-byte“Roman” character input, but com-puters require two bytes of informa-tion to process languages with largecharacter sets like Chinese, Japanese,and Korean (usually collectivelyreferred to as “CJK”).

When computer processing ofChinese characters became possible,China adopted GB (InternationalPhonetic Alphabetic) code as its stan-dard for word processing in 1981. GBcode is the internal code for SimplifiedChinese, and is built in SimplifiedChinese Windows and its applications.

It is a two-dimensional table con-taining some 6,700 characters in pho-netic order. Meanwhile, Taiwanadopted the Big 5 code as its standardfor word processing in 1984. Big 5code is the internal code forTraditional Chinese Windows and itsapplications. It is a two-dimensionaltable containing a similar number ofcharacters in an ascending orderaccording to the number of strokes.In 1994, the government of HongKong created an extension to Big 5,calling it the Government CommonCharacter Set (GCCS), renaming itthe Hong Kong SupplementaryCharacter Set (HKSCS) in 1999.

Although more than half of thecharacters in these two tables (GB andBig 5) overlap, they are not one-to-one transformations due to the factthat they are arranged in differentorders. As new characters are intro-duced into the Chinese language andold characters are phased out, bothGB and Big 5 tables need to beupdated periodically.

Localized Chinese Windows andapplications are best suited to view,edit, and print Chinese characters, butnot everyone has access to these pro-grams. In the PC environment,Microsoft offers downloads of bothGB and Big 5 plug-ins for non-Chinese Windows to display andreformat Chinese files in Officeapplications. For example, theEnglish version of MS Office 97 or2000 may be used to view bothSimplified and Traditional Chinesecharacters if its Asian language sup-port pack is installed.

However, a Chinese input methodis needed to edit the Chinese texts,and at least one Chinese font isrequired to print Chinese texts. So-called bridge or “hybrid” softwareprograms, such as TwinBridge,Chinese Star, or NJStar ➡

Country/Region China Taiwan Hong Kong

Spoken dialect Mandarin Mandarin Cantonese

Written form Simplified Chinese Traditional Chinese SC, TC, or Cantonesedialect characters

Table 1. Major Spoken and Written Languages in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong


Communicator, can function as aninterface between Chinese docu-ments and operating systems based inother languages. That is, a non-Chinese OS with one of the above-cited programs may form the basis ofan extended Chinese platform, underwhich Chinese texts may be viewed,edited, and printed correctly. Anotheralternative is to request Chinese doc-uments in portable document format(PDF). PDF files should be createdfrom localized Chinese systems. ThePDF can then be opened and viewedusing Adobe’s free Acrobat Readeron virtually any platform. This is afeasible solution when no further for-matting, editing, or desktop pub-lishing work is necessary.

For Mac users, there is a CLK(Chinese Language Kit) available for anon-Chinese OS environment that pro-vides two distinct scripts: TraditionalChinese and Simplified Chinese.These scripts can be installed inde-pendently or together (these Chineselanguage supports are also built in Macwith OS 9 or later versions).

The conversion between Simplifiedand Traditional Chinese characters(i.e., between GB and Big 5 codes)may be done automatically by a

computer somewhat accurately. MostChinese platforms, including MSChinese Word 2000, now include thisconversion ability. One bright spot onthe horizon is the development ofUnicode, which, as a superset of thecharacters in GB and Big 5, couldeventually phase out these two char-acter sets so the conversion betweenSimplified and Traditional Chinesecharacters would be no longer neces-sary. For those who need more infor-mation regarding Simplified andTraditional Chinese computing issues,the following websites may be helpful:

www.mandarintools.comwww.chinesecomputing.comwww.yale.edu/chinesemachttp://partners.adobe.com/asn/

developer/type/main.htmlwww.njstar.comwww.twinbridge.comwww.cstar.com.cn

Target Audiences: China, Taiwan,Hong Kong, and North America

It should be a piece of cake, then,one may think, to produce both versionsof Chinese with a single translation andconversion effort in one go. It remainsan incorrect concept in the translation

community to assume that “SimplifiedChinese” only means SimplifiedChinese characters with stroke reduc-tions, and that “Traditional Chinese”only means Traditional Chinese charac-ters represented by its complex forms.In fact, the true differences between“Simplified Chinese” and “TraditionalChinese,” from language and transla-tion perspectives, are represented byvariations of terms and styles developedin each Chinese-speaking region due tocultural differences caused by pro-longed political separation.

Chinese communities have spreadall over the world, includingSingapore (Simplified Chinese) andMalaysia (Traditional Chinese). Forpurposes of this article, focus isplaced on the four major markets forChinese translation: China, Taiwan,Hong Kong, and North America.Although they have much incommon, each market has its ownunique flavor and preferences.

The most distinguishable differ-ences between China (SimplifiedChinese) and Taiwan (TraditionalChinese), from a language aspect, arethe actual terms used and style varia-tions between these two regions.Some of the terms used in China and

Simplified vs. Traditional Chinese: What Every Translation Agency Should Know Continued

English Terms SC terms in SC terms in TC terms in TC terms inSC characters TC characters TC characters SC characters

Internet

Zip code

Intellectual property right

Project

Senior management

Videotape

Ball point pen

Table 2. Comparison of Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese Terms


Taiwan are given in Table 2, and anexample of a typical translation isprovided in Table 3. Although theterms or styles used in China are usu-ally recognized by people in Taiwanand vice versa, improper use of termsor styles may become culturally sen-sitive and, in some cases, offensive.

The primary cause for the differ-ences in terminology between thesetwo translations can be attributed to thefact that, over the past 50 years, Chinaand Taiwan have been ruled by separategovernments. As a result, their lan-guage nuances and cultures experi-enced unique evolvement. Despiteincreased communication between thetwo regions in recent years, the differ-ences remain enormous. To addressthis issue, some efforts have been maderecently in the computer industry. Forexample, Chinese Word 2000 not onlyconverts the internal code, but also con-verts some of the most commonly usedterms, such as “hardware,” “software,”and “printer,” between Simplified

and Traditional Chinese. Still, suchautomated programming switchesremain far from sufficient for thepurpose of translation. Ultimately, toconvert one version to another is, infact, a human localization processrather than a machinated conversion.Native language skills are required tobridge the gap.

The Chinese language used inHong Kong is twofold. After 1949,communications between the peoplein Hong Kong and China virtuallystopped, even though they were partof the same continent. However,communications between the peoplein Hong Kong and Taiwan continuedas usual, with both regions usingTraditional Chinese characters.Therefore, the Chinese languageused in Hong Kong during thisperiod (1949 to early 1980s) moreclosely resembles the TraditionalChinese used in Taiwan, with stronga Cantonese influence.

This scenario has changed since the

early 1980s, when China opened itsdoor to the world so that people inHong Kong could travel to China,resulting in large groups of MainlandChinese flooding into Hong Kong. Therenewed communications between thetwo peoples somewhat mitigated thelanguage differences (particularly after1997, when China reclaimed HongKong and Simplified Chinese becameone of the common languages in HongKong along with English). Therefore,due to political reasons and changes inpopulation in Hong Kong, Chinesetranslation for use in Hong Kong isnow considered to be less culturallysensitive than in previous periods.

Lastly, this discussion would notbe complete without including somemention of Cantonese dialect charac-ters, which are neither Simplifiednor Traditional Chinese, but ratherthe written renderings of Cantonese.For example, the Cantonese dialectcharacters for “is not” are (pro-nounced “m-hai” in Cantonese), ➡

Table 3. Comparison of Simplified and Traditional Chinese Translations

English texts

The influx of foreign capital has playedan important role in stimulating thedemand for domestic investments,encouraging China’s continued reform ofits economic system and more opennesswith the rest of the world, and promotinga sustained and healthy development ofChina’s national economy.

With the increase of operating capital,and loans for technical renovation beinggradually implemented, the factory willadopt new measures to reduce lossesdue to poor product quality.

SC translation which would be used inMainland China

TC translation which would be used in Taiwan


but the Simplified and TraditionalChinese characters are (pro-nounced “bu-shi”). The Cantonesedialect character for “he/she/it” is (pronounced “keui” in Cantonese),but the Simplified and TraditionalChinese characters are (pronounced “ta”) for “he/she/it,”respectively. Therefore, whenordering translations for use in HongKong it is crucial to determine if thedocument in question is being usedfor more formal purposes (pub-lishing), or for a colloquial presenta-tion (telephone scripts). The lattermay require the use of “Cantonesedialect characters.”

The Chinese translation for theChinese communities in NorthAmerica (U.S. and Canada) is veryunique. This is due to the fact that theChinese population in North Americais composed of Chinese immigrantsof all literacy levels and vastly dif-ferent backgrounds, who have comeinto the country from all over theworld at different periods of time. Nodoubt, the mixing of these Chinesecultures is good news for the Chinesetranslators who serve the NorthAmerica market, because the Chineselanguage used in North America isless culturally sensitive and no singlestyle can accommodate all backgrounds.

Although most translations useTraditional Chinese, the style or lan-guage usage is less sensitive thanwould be the case in China orTaiwan. Actually, one may often findthe style of Chinese used by theNorth American Chinese communityto be a grand mixture of bothSimplified and Traditional Chinese,old and new alike.

It is extremely important to con-sider hiring local linguists when onehandles a Chinese translation projectfor the North American market. Everyyear, many new English terms are cre-ated in North America whose con-cepts have not yet been introduced toChina or Taiwan. For example, let’slook at financial and insurance termssuch as “diluted share,” “vesting,”“deductibles,” and “vice-president.”Due to the differences in cultural andsocial systems, these terms and theconcepts they represent did not existin China until very recently, and theirtranslations are still not found in anymodern dictionaries published inChina. Because of the specificEnglish origin of such terms, cultural-specific translation should be under-taken by individuals who havephysically studied, lived, and workedin North America.

Suggestions to Translation Agenciesand Other Translation Users

As discussed, the most importantissue when dealing with an English-Chinese translation project is to deter-mine the target country first, ratherthan if the language that will be neededis Simplified or Traditional Chinese. Infact, converting one version to another(i.e., to convert a translation for China[Simplified Chinese] to a translationfor Taiwan [Traditional Chinese]) is alocalization process rather than one ofphysical character conversion. It shouldbe called localization, which normallyrequires that 40-60% (depending onsubject matter) of your time be spent onproducing the first translation. In alocalization process, the change ofstyle and terms is far more importantthan code conversion, and requiresnative language skills. This means thatone of the linguists involved in a trans-lation project (translator, editor, orproofreader) should have lived, studied,and worked in the target country.

Whether Simplified or TraditionalChinese should be used for the targetaudience in question certainlydepends on the customer’s specificrequirements. However, in theabsence of such direction, the general

Simplified vs. Traditional Chinese: What Every Translation Agency Should Know Continued

Target audience in China Taiwan Hong Kong North America

Chinese characters SC TC SC, TC, or Cantonese SC or TC (written form) dialect characters

Encoding system GB Big 5 GB or Big 5 GB or Big 5

Cultural sensitivity Highly sensitive Highly sensitive Less sensitive Less sensitive

Translator/editor/ One should be One should be On case-by-case Local linguists requiredproofreader a native SC a native TC basis (must have studied, requirement speaker speaker lived, and worked in

the local community)

Table 4. Simplified vs. Traditional Used in Chinese-Speaking Target Countries

Continued on p.30


S peakers modify and adapt lan-guage continuously to satisfytheir communication needs.

They do so not only in response tochanges in the external world, but alsoas a means of venting the feelings andemotions that such changes arouse.

Argentina is in the midst of asevere crisis which has economic,political, and social roots and over-tones. I will not go into the details ofthis except to illustrate the point madeabove. As the crisis unfolds, peoplecreate new ways of describing realityand expressing their feelings towardsit. As a result, translators and inter-preters are being called upon to findequivalents to communicate this ter-minology to people who not onlyhave a different language, but whoalso act in a different cultural contextand according to a different mindset.Although this is always the case wheninterpreting or translating, the exis-tence of a crisis magnifies the com-munications “gap.” This gap isespecially prevalent in cases wherereferences to the events unfolding areabsolutely alien to the target culture.

A good example of this is the term“bancarización.” Before December3, 2001, it merely referred to doingbusiness with banks or “banking”(something that not a very large per-centage of the population does inArgentina). But on December 3, newrules were passed making it compul-sory to carry out almost all moneytransactions through banks.

How did the authorities enact this?By setting restrictions on the with-drawal of cash! When you cannot gethold of cash, the only way to pay iswith checks, with a credit or debitcard, etc. This means you need to geta bank account, and so must anybodywho wants to sell you something ordo any paid job for you. For thatreason, “bancarización” should now

be more properly rendered as “com-pulsory banking.”

The following is a list of a few wordsand expressions linked to the currentArgentine crisis. In some cases, theseterms are newly coined; in others, theyare old words that have acquired newmeanings within the context of thecrisis. Some terms will stay with us,others will perhaps be washed away. Inthe meantime, translators and inter-preters need to find ways of dealingwith these words, and in order to do thatthey must be aware of what they denote.

Corralito: Literally, a small pen, suchas a playpen for children. The namehas been given to the new rules thatprevent people from having access totheir bank deposits or withdrawingcash from banks. At the same time, itis a play on the word “corral,” astockyard where animals are kept.

Corralón: A reformed, more flexible“corralito,” or alternatively, a stricter“corralito,” depending on who you ask,which points at the existence of differentinterpretations for these new expresions.

Currolito: A play on the words “cor-ralito” and “curro.” The latter is aslang term for a scam. The implica-tion is that the government has swin-dled people out of their money.

Anticorralito: Adjective used for aclaim or demonstration against the“corralito.”

Pesificación: The conversion of U.S.dollar-denominated deposits orcredits into Argentine pesos prior tothe devaluation of the peso. It is alsoused as a verb (i.e., “pesificar”). Ithas given rise to colorful expressionssuch as “No me pesifiques” (Give mesome respect) and “Se me pesificó larelación” (Me and my partner are notgetting along so well).

CER (Coeficiente de Estabilizaciónde Referencia): An index newly cre-ated by the government for the futureadjustment or indexing of loans anddeposits that were “pesified” (con-verted into pesos). Nobody yet fullyunderstands how this index will beapplied. Since “CER” sounds like“ser” (to be) in Spanish, this has orig-inated a number of jokes, such as“CER o no CER” (To be or not to be).

Choribanco: A robber bank. It is aplay on words combining “choripán”(a chorizo or grilled sausage sand-wich—a staple at soccer matches andpopular festivals) and “chorro,” slangfor robber. It reflects the reaction ofangry depositors to the current diffi-culties they are experiencing whentrying to withdraw money from banks.

Veraz: This is a reference to a creditrating company that lists people whohave failed to pay a credit, loan, etc.Inclusion in their files means one mayhave credit rating problems.Examples of use: “Pedir un Veraz”(to get a credit rating); “Estar en elVeraz” (to have a bad credit rating);and “Me salió un Veraz” (“I turned upin a delinquency report”—usually inan unexpected, unwarranted way).

Patacón, Lecop, Porteño: Names ofbonds issued by different economicauthorities (the first by the BuenosAires Province, the last by the

The New (and Not So New) Words Bred by the Argentine CrisisBy Rut Simcovich

…As the crisis unfolds,people create new ways of

describing reality andexpressing their feelings

towards it…

➡


City of Buenos Aires, etc.), which arebeing widely used as legal tender as aconsequence of the lack of pesos.

Cacerolazo: A means of protest bybanging on empty pots. On December19, 2001, President De la Rúa made aspeech on TV that led many people totake spontaneously to the streetsbanging pots and pans. It was one ofthe motives for his resignation. Thesame thing happened a few days laterto his successor. This is considered tobe a spontaneous, nonpartisan, mainlymiddle-class form of protest.Derivatives: “Caceroleros” (partici-pants in “cacerolazos”); “cacerolear”(to take part in a “cacerolazo”).

Piqueteros: “Piquete” is used in Spanish(as “picket” in English) for a group ofpeople who obstruct the entrance to aworkplace during a strike. More recently,“piquete” became a form of protest bythe underprivileged and unemployed thatconsists in blocking roads by burningtires, setting other obstacles in traffic,and establishing a soup kitchen on majorroads or highways. Currently, it hascome to designate a political movement,so that one may encounter frequent ref-erences to “líderes piqueteros” (pick-eting leaders), “marcha piquetera”(picketing march or demonstration), etc.

Escrachar: A traditional slang term,which originally meant having one’smugshot taken; by extension, it cameto mean “being put in evidence,”“being put on the spot.” The“escrache” is a form of protest thatinvolves the gathering of a crowd at theprivate address of a person they wish todenounce. It was initially developed bya nongovernmental organization linkedto the children of missing persons as away of denouncing people who hadbeen involved in the military repressionthat took place in Argentina during the1970s. It has now been picked up byother groups as an expression of socialrepudiation. In the last few months, anumber of politicians and governmentofficials, upon being detected by somepeople at public places such as restau-rants, sports stadiums, etc., have beenthe object of an “escrache.”

Judicializar: To take to the courts, to filea lawsuit. It means involving the courtsin a situation that would have normallybeen worked out in the political arena.

Asamblea barrial: Neighborhoodassembly. In many cases, the spon-taneous, pot-banging demonstra-tions gave way to people gatheringsomewhere in their neighborhood totry to organize themselves as a pres-

sure group. It has given rise to theso-called “asambleísmo,” becausesome of these groups have con-tinued meeting and elected repre-sentatives to interact with othersimilar groups, thus formingumbrella organizations. The term isused in reference to grassrootsinvolvement and a certain style ofpolitical activism, as opposed to“barras bravas” (see below).

Barra brava: A hooligan at a soccermatch. By extension, “barrabrav-ismo” is the use of thugs to disruptpolitical gatherings or demonstrations,or to practice a repressive style of pol-itics. “Barra brava” designates bothan individual hooligan (i.e., “Él es unbarra brava”) and a gang (“Élpertenece a la barra brava de Boca”).

Hopefully, at some point in thefuture, Argentina will come out of thiscrisis. When that happens, many ofthese words and expressions will prob-ably be forgotten. Others will perhapsmanage to endure, or they will evolveand mutate, and the language will retainthem as the archeological traces of whathappened far away and long ago.

The New (and Not So New) Words Bred by the Argentine Crisis Continued

requirements in Table 4 could servesas a guideline:

ConclusionSimplifying Chinese characters has

been an ongoing development inChinese history. The differencesbetween Simplified and TraditionalChinese extend beyond mere conver-sions between Simplified andTraditional characters (GB and Big 5

code conversion), which can generallybe accomplished by computer pro-grams. More importantly, convertingone form to another to effectively com-municate your message to the targetaudience is more accurately described aslocalization. The differences in stylesand terms are due primarily to varioushistoric reasons rather than just the sim-plification of Chinese characters. Inorder to satisfy the needs of the specific

markets they are working in, translationagencies or other translation usersshould keep the target country in mindwhen selecting translators for projects.

Simplified vs. Traditional Chinese: What Every Translation Agency Should Know Continued from p.28

The authors wish to express their sincerethanks to Mr. Duncan Shaw of DTSLanguage Services for his invaluable input.


(Note: An abbreviated version of thisinterview appeared in SlavFile, thenewsletter of ATA’s Slavic LanguagesDivision. The complete text alsoappears on their website atw w w. americantranslators .org/ divisions/SLD.)

I recently interviewed (over theInternet) Joel Stern, a staffmember of the Office of Language

Services at the State Department,who translates from several Slaviclanguages into English for that insti-tution. He recounts for us the paththat brought him to his current posi-tion and some of the tribulations heencountered along the way. Hisexperience seems relevant to transla-tors laboring in this field byreflecting both the positive and dis-heartening aspects of our profession.Although Mr. Stern’s fully idiomaticPolish would no doubt serve himadmirably for the purpose of thisinterview, in the interest of the read-ership at large, the language ofchoice was English.

UK: How many languages do youknow and what are they?

I can read all the Slavic languageswith a varying degree of fluency (Iam most proficient in Russian,Polish, and Ukrainian), as well asGerman, Italian, Spanish, French,and Hungarian. I have a bowingacquaintance with Swedish, Dutch,Rumanian, and Esperanto. A longtime ago, I studied Farsi and Turkish,but let them slip completely.

UK: Did you have any backgroundin Slavic languages through familyor otherwise?

I have a checkered background. Mymaternal grandmother was born in

Kiev, while the paternal side of myfamily stemmed from the Carpathianregion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire(which became part of Czechoslovakiaafter the First World War, was brieflyannexed by Hungary around 1939, andis now the westernmost part ofUkraine, not far from Mukachevo andUzhgorod). My older relatives onFather’s side of the family spokeCzech, Yiddish, and Hungarian, andwere able to communicate with theirrural Ruthenian neighbors.

UK: Do you think your talent forlanguages runs in the family?

It’s possible. One of my paternaluncles, for example, though an uned-ucated man (I doubt he went beyondsixth grade), could converse in sevenor eight languages. He even servedas a maitre d’ in a Buenos Aires hotelduring the 1940s and 1950s beforecoming to the United States. Lateron, when he was the headwaiter atthe Bellvue Stratford Hotel in Phila-delphia, his fluency in Spanish,French, Hungarian, Czech, etc.,stood him in good stead. If I inher-ited any linguistic talent at all frommy forebears, I suppose it came pri-marily from him.

UK: In what sequence did youacquire the Slavic languages thatyou know, and what determinedthat sequence?

My first Slavic language wasRussian, which I started in my junioryear at Central High School inPhiladelphia after four semesters ofLatin. I had originally intended totake up classical studies, owing to mychildhood fascination with Greek,Roman, and Teutonic myths and thetales of King Arthur and the Knightsof the Round Table. But over time myinterests changed, particularly after Icame across some of Gogol’s andDostoyevsky’s works in Englishtranslation at the local library. Forsome reason they struck a chord inme (perhaps because of my Easternand Central European family roots),and I decided to pursue my newinterest further. Fortunately, my highschool offered Russian courses fromwhich I was able to profit. At theUniversity of Michigan, after an ini-tial period of uncertainty when I wasundecided whether to major in NearEastern or Slavic studies, I finallyopted for the latter. I took up Polishand then Czech as cognate Slavic lan-guages to satisfy my B.A. and M.A.requirements. There was nothing spe-cific that determined this sequence.My choices at the time were basedlargely on what the curriculum con-tained and on my opinion of the indi-vidual professors.

UK: Based on your experience, whatcould you say about the relative dif-ficulty of particular languages?

I would not want to venture anycategorical statements, since I’m byno means an expert on linguistics. AllI can say is that for me, personally, itwas fairly easy to acquire a basicreading knowledge of Ukrainian,Belarusian, and Slovak after so manyyears devoted to masteringPolish. The South Slavic languages,however, were a harder nut to ➡

Slavic Translation for the Determined: Reflectionsof a Polyglot TranslatorBy Ursula Klingenberg

…Studying languages wasan irresistible urge tome…I am fortunate in

being able to make a livingout of this strange

obsession….


crack. I find them much more diffi-cult to learn thoroughly. Bulgarianand Macedonian have formidableconjugations. Serbo-Croatian dis-plays a wide and confusing range ofdialectical variations. Slovenianposes a particular challenge in that itretains the archaic dual for nouns,pronouns, and verbs, and requiresheroic feats of memorization beforeone can hope to use it correctly.

UK: If someone were to follow inyour footsteps, in what sequenceshould he study Slavic languages?

Again, I can’t proffer any well-informed judgments. It would seemto me, however, that for anyprospective specialist in this field afluent command of Russian wouldbe desirable, indeed even requisite,from the viewpoint of employmentopportunities in both the federal gov-ernment and the private sector. Russianis the language I deal with mostoften in my own work as a translator,reviewer, and test evaluator at theState Department. Requests forinterpretation and translation fromand into other Slavic tongues cometo us infrequently, and are generally“outsourced” to freelancers.

UK: Tell us about the methods oflanguage acquisition that work bestfor you. What do you do to keep upyour skills in the languages youknow?

Well, if I’m studying on my ownoutside the classroom, I generallystart by tackling the grammar of thelanguage (a habit carried over frommy high school Latin classes, nodoubt!). I don’t find this burdensomeor boring in the least; it’s an intellec-tual game for me, like doing cross-word puzzles or playing chess. For

some languages, such as Belarusianor Macedonian, reference materialsmay not be readily available.Fortunately, the Internet can some-times be a real godsend when ordi-nary sources (bookstores, libraries,etc.) fall short.

After picking up the rudimentsof grammar, I then turn to simpleprose (short newspaper articles,children’s books, fairy tales,etc.). Of course, prerecorded tapesand TV and radio programs can alsobe helpful for pronunciation andlistening comprehension.

If there is a native speaker around,I will try to enlist his or her assistancewhen I have a question. This methodworked well for me in Philadelphiaback in the 1980s, when I wastutoring several Polish and Russianimmigrants in English. In exchange,they would patiently correct my lin-guistic blunders. At present, thanks tothe blessing of e-mail, I have accessto a small network of gracious Poleswho are furthering my knowledge oftheir language. My colleagues at theState Department do their best to fillin the gaps in my knowledge ofRussian and Ukrainian terminologyand idioms. In addition, at home I tryto read a wide variety of magazinesand books to stay abreast of currentcultural and political trends.Unfortunately, my first love, belles-lettres and literary translation, has tofall by the wayside for lack of timeand energy.

When I first started working inLanguage Services (LS) at the StateDepartment, I had high-flown aspira-tions to outstrip my predecessor there,who retired at the age of 80 and trans-lated from some 35 languages intoEnglish. I realized after a while that itwould cost me too much time andeffort to achieve that goal. Justkeeping up my skills in the languages

I work with most (Russian, Ukrainian,and Polish) is a very demandingtask. So I made the conscious choiceto concentrate on those three, at leastfor professional purposes.

UK: You mentioned that you havedevoted a lot of effort to masteringPolish. Was there anything thatattracted you to that particularlanguage?

Not at the beginning. As I saidbefore, I initially took Polish andCzech to satisfy my academicrequirements. In fact, I almostdropped Polish after the first year,since my experience in the classroomwas dreadful. It so happened that ourelementary course was taught by afull professor who had gained renownas a translator of Polish liter-ature. Unfortunately, he seemed toresent the imposition of having toinstruct lowly undergrads, so hewould photocopy pages out of agrammar book and tell the students todrill each other while he sat in thecorner with a bored expression,smoking his pipe. Conversation prac-tice was nonexistent (maybe it wasjust as well; the professor had a thickBritish accent and I suspect hisspoken Polish left much to bedesired). Still, I soldiered my waythrough the course and had the goodluck in the second year to be taughtby a native speaker, a lady fromWarsaw with genuine pedagogicalability. For reading selections, sheassigned us short stories from JerzySzaniawski’s charming ProfessorTutka, which I absolutely adored. Itwas at that time I also discoveredthe fascinating science fiction uni-verse of Stanislaw Lem. I readSolaris (in English translation) andwas inspired to continue my studyof Polish so that one day I would

Slavic Translation for the Determined: Reflections of a Polyglot Translator Continued


be able to relish him in theoriginal. However, the first completePolish novel I ever read wasBoleslaw Prus’ Pharaoh. I had tolook up nearly every word and it tookme a year to finish both volumes. Ialso wanted to read Sienkiewicz’strilogy in Polish, but couldn’t copewith its 17th-century archaisms, so Ihad to content myself with JeremiahCurtin’s florid Victorian-era Englishtranslations. I did manage, though,to slog through the Polish versionsof Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis andWithout Dogma, which were simpleenough in style and vocabulary to beaccessible to me.

UK: Do you have any favoriteRussian authors?

Different writers appeal to me fordifferent reasons. Zoshchenko,because he’s hilarious but with anundercurrent of melancholy. I findhim a kindred spirit. Believe it or not,I also immensely enjoyed KonstantinSimonov’s war novels, all of which Iread in graduate school. And I hate toadmit this, but Sologub’s PettyDemon and his short stories alsostrike a chord in me...I have a tastefor the macabre and uncanny

UK: Did you receive any systematictraining in translation or interpre-tation during your student years?

None whatsoever. The Universityof Michigan had no formal programin that discipline. A lone seminar inthe Slavic Languages Departmentcurriculum was fully devoted totranslation (taught by Carl Proffer,the late founder and editor-in-chief ofthe Russian Literature Triquarterly). Wepored over English renderings ofRussian prose and poetry to critiquethem for accuracy and style. As our

final project, we had to translatetwo Russian texts into English—onepiece of fiction and one of nonfic-tion. I chose V. Odoyevsky’s TheSylph (an 1837 short story on eso-teric themes) and V. Rozanov’s 1899literary essay On Symbolists andDecadents. Proffer liked my transla-tions enough to include them in the winter 1974 issue of hisRussian Literature Triquarterly. Thosewere my very first published transla-tions and, I must add, the work I ammost proud of in my professionalcareer.

UK: I notice you didn’t go beyondthe M.A. program at Michigan. Whydidn’t you continue your studiestoward a Ph.D.?

Frankly, I had no desire to joinacademia. The theoretical aspects ofthe graduate-level Slavic program,which was heavily influenced then bysemiotics (Lacan et al.), were largelyincomprehensible to me and boredme stiff. Nor did I want to contendwith the “publish or perish” tread-mill. I sought other, less conven-tional, outlets for my interests.

UK: Were you able to discover suchoutlets, and make a living at thesame time?

With mixed success. While still ingraduate school, I did abstracting fora linguistic research outfit in AnnArbor (I can’t recall its name), alongwith freelance translations of shortstories by Zoshchenko and InnaVarlamova. My major achievementback then was my translation ofZoshchenko’s 1933 satire cum socialcommentary, Youth Restored, forArdis Publishers (Proffer’s own com-pany). It eventually came out in 1983(after a seven-year hiatus!).

UK: A rather long time to wait, Ishould say...How did you manage tosupport yourself in the meantime?

I left Michigan in 1977 and wentback East to seek gainful employ-ment. After a period of futilesearching, I landed a job as anindexer/abstractor in Philadelphia atthe Institute for Scientific Information,a regular white-collar factory. I stayedthere nearly four years, then worked asa medical proofreader for one year atSaunders Publishing Company.

UK: Did you get a chance to makeuse of your language skills in thosejobs?

Not really. I felt as though I weretreading water. To maintain my lan-guage skills in the hope of betterprospects in the future, I took what-ever bread-and-butter assignmentscame my way. I freelanced forBerlitz and Inlingua, participated in amajor project for the FranklinInstitute in Philadelphia (the transla-tion of foreign-language articles onpesticides for the EnvironmentalProtection Agency), and translatedpolitical and military materials,mostly in Russian, Polish, and Czech,for federal government agencies.

UK: It seems you had given up lit-erary translations altogether...

Far from it. I mentioned that I was,and still am, a great admirer ofStanislaw Lem. I had always wantedan opportunity to try my hand at trans-lating him into English. In 1980 thatopportunity presented itself. HarcourtBrace Jovanovich, a well-known pub-lishing house in New York, was plan-ning to bring out an English-languagecollection of nine stories from Lem’sStar Diaries and required a ➡


translator for the task. I volunteeredmy services and was asked to submita sample translation of the first storyin the collection. HBJ was suffi-ciently pleased with my effort to offerme the commission.

UK: Lem’s Polish style is highlyidiosyncratic and quite a challengeto the translator.

Yes, but I was ambitious to provemyself. In hindsight I realize that I bitoff more than I could chew. Thedeadline assigned to me was eightmonths, which I thought I could meeteasily, even though I was holdingdown a full-time job. I simply didn’tappreciate the unique difficulties thattranslating Lem could present. Whatshould have been enjoyable turnedout to be frustrating drudgery.…Today I’m a lot wiser and moreobjective about my abilities.

UK: Did your Lem translation evercome out? Do you receive any royalties?

Yes, after much revision it waspublished by HBJ under the titleMemoirs of a Space Traveler, and isstill available in paperback. I receiveno royalties. I was paid a flat fee ofless than two thousand dollars foreight months of grueling toil (a mis-erable pittance, even back in1980). What annoys me most is thatHBJ reprinted four chapters of thebook in the New Yorker and onechapter in Penthouse (!), for which Ididn’t get a cent. It was a bitter butedifying experience for me. Sincethen I haven’t done a single literarytranslation.

UK: Let’s turn to your present posi-tion at the U.S. State Depart-ment. What led you to apply there?

As I said before, I wasn’t fully sat-isfied with my work as an indexer andmedical proofreader. Not that there’sanything wrong with those occupa-tions. But after devoting so mucheffort to mastering difficult languagesand broadening my education, Isimply wanted to put my skills tobetter use. Over a period of two/threeyears, I sent out several hundredrésumés to prospective employers inboth the public and private sector,including translation agenciesthroughout the country. The onlyresponses I received were negative ornoncommittal. Finally, I chanced tofind a reference somewhere to theState Department’s Office ofLanguage Services (LS) and thought Iwould try my luck. I knew absolutelynothing about that organization buthad nothing to lose, so out wentanother résumé...shortly afterwards Ireceived an encouraging reply.

UK: Evidently something aboutyou caught their eye.

I’d say it was a matter of pure luckand timing. My predecessor, the eld-erly gentleman who knew more than30 languages, was about to retire andLS needed someone to take hisplace. At that time (1983) I couldread 12 or 13 languages, so perhapsthey considered me a suitable candi-date. In any case, they invited me tocome down to Washington for testingand an interview.

UK: What were the tests like?

I took four translation tests in oneday, from Hungarian, Czech, Polish,and Russian into English. They eachconsisted of three passages of 250-300 words. The particular subjectshave slipped my mind. All I canremember is that the Russian texts

seemed extraordinarily difficult, andI had to struggle to make them soundhalfway readable.

UK: How long did it take the StateDepartment to reach a decision onhiring you?

I was notified soon afterward thatI had passed the tests, but the finaldecision on hiring was contingent onmy passing a background check inorder to obtain a security clear-ance. That process lasted a full 14months. I didn’t begin working in LSuntil March 1985.

UK: So you’ve been there for 17years now. Tell us a little about youroffice. How many other linguistswork there? Do they interpret aswell as translate?

I’ll try to be brief, since the rangeof what we do is enormous. First, inregard to organization, LS is split intotwo main divisions: translation andinterpretation. Some of the translatorsdo interpret, and likewise there areinterpreters who do translations. Butthat isn’t true of everyone.

As for the size of our staff, it isrelatively small, given the scope andimportance of our duties. Wepresently have (in addition to theadministrative personnel) 40-oddpermanent staff members, almostevenly split between interpretersand translators. We cover the majorEuropean and Latin American lan-guages, including Spanish, French,Italian, Portuguese, German, andRussian, and four Asian and MiddleEastern tongues (Chinese, Japanese,Arabic, and Korean). “Languages of limited diffusion,” such asAlbanian, Greek, Burmese, etc., arehandled by independent contrac-tors, of whom there are many



hundreds. However, translation assign-ments in the languages covered by thepermanent staff may also be sent outoccasionally to contractors if we areshorthanded, a job is long andextremely technical with a rushdeadline, or one of us is on TDY(tour of duty) abroad.

UK: What are some of your dutiesas a translator?

Translation from Russian, Ukrainian,and, to a much lesser extent, Polish,constitutes the bulk of my workhere. Every conceivable subject mayend up on my desk (diplomatic notes,government decrees, laws, scientificreports, certificates, etc.).

In my capacity as translator I amalso called upon to review my col-leagues’ work. This is a necessary andhelpful task, but often it cannot beaccomplished because of severe timeconstraints or lack of personnel.

A vital responsibility of all LStranslators is the comparison oftreaties and accords between the U.S.and other countries in various fields,including military cooperation, armscontrol, commerce, educationalexchanges. Possible linguistic dis-crepancies must be identified, anddisagreements on the interpretation ofwording must be resolved, prior to thesigning and formal adoption of suchdocuments to avoid future legal com-plications. This task is an indispen-sable element in all negotiations withforeign states.

One more responsibility I have isto evaluate the tests of prospectivecandidates for staff positions or con-tract assignments. Over the past 17years, I estimate that I have gradednearly a thousand.

Finally, I screen foreign-languagecorrespondence addressed to theU.S. President, the First Lady, the

Secretary of State, and other high-level officials. This mail comes to usfrom the White House mailoffice. Until the late 1990s this mailcame to us in torrents; I must haveread some 30-40,000 letters fromprivate citizens in Central andEastern Europe and the formerUSSR, as well as from immigrantswriting to us in the languages of thatregion of the world. After the eventsof September 11, however, thisstream has dwindled to a trickle…Iassume the mail is being routed else-where for disposal.

UK: Has the nature of your work changed under subsequent administrations?

Yes, considerably. When I firststarted in LS, there was one USSR,with Russian as its officiallanguage. Ten years ago that mono-lith broke apart, and more than adozen nations arose in that same ter-ritory. In practice, this means atremendous increase in my workload,since many of those new states aresending us material that is stillwritten in Russian (they obviouslyrealize the inability of U.S. diplomatsto handle Kirghiz, Estonian,Turkmen, etc.). The emergence ofindependent Ukraine has brought aconcomitant increase in Ukrainiandocuments requiring translation;Moldova rightly insists on its prerog-ative to make use of its official language.

Unfortunately, the size of the LSstaff has not expanded commensu-rately to meet these new demands.That is the reason why I have con-sciously chosen to restrict myself tothe three languages in which I feelmost comfortable. I simply lack thetime and energy to deal competentlywith more.

UK: Isn’t it true that languages ofCentral and Eastern Europe, theMiddle East, and South and EastAsia are considered “incentive”languages by the State Depart-ment? Why don’t you hire morestaff?

Well, we do receive a large numberof résumés from people claiming tohave relevant translation/interpretationexperience and skills in such lan-guages. Some are even full profes-sors. The trouble is, hardly any ofthem can pass our tests.

UK: What could be the reason forthat?

Let me say first of all that we don’tdeliberately concoct these tests tobaffle and trip up our candidates. Theyare all passages selected by consensusfrom texts of average difficulty thatone or another of us has had to trans-late or review.

The basic reason for failure, I amconvinced, is the inability to writeclear, idiomatic English. That is thevery first thing I look for whengrading an exam. Knowledge of spe-cialized terminology can be acquiredthrough constant practice. Excellentwriting ability and the knack of con-veying a thought accurately, con-cisely, and lucidly from one languageto another seem to be inborn, likeperfect pitch or mathematical genius.

My criterion for grading isstraightforward: can a candidate betrusted to translate difficult prosewithout the need for extensive reviewand editing? LS does not have themanpower to monitor the quality ofthe work of its contractors. We needpersons who already have the essen-tial skills and experience to carry outtheir assignments competently and ina timely manner. ➡


UK: If there is anyone with aknowledge of Slavic or CentralAsian languages who might beinterested in applying for an LSstaff position or in working for youas a contractor, what sort oftraining would you recommend?Would a degree from an accreditedschool of translation and interpre-tation be helpful?

Not necessarily. I can’t even rec-ommend a particular type of training.Most of the translators here did not goto the type of accredited school yourefer to. Besides, that’s no guaranteeof competence either. Let me give youa concrete example. Two years agothere was a group of advanced stu-dents from the Monterey Institute ofForeign Studies, eight or nine in all,who took our Russian to Englishtest. Out of that group, only onepassed, a young woman with negli-gible translation experience. What sether apart was natural aptitude.

UK: Let’s conclude with a few morequestions. What is your opinion ofcomputers as translation tools?Time savers or a necessary evil? Isyour work high-tech or low-tech inthat regard?

I have mixed emotions about com-puters. I do appreciate the conven-ience of word processing, enjoysurfing the Internet, and benefit fromconsultations with my Polish friendsvia e-mail. I certainly wouldn’t dreamof going back to the electric typewriterI started with in LS. There are times,however, when I can’t help recalling aline from one of Allen Ginsberg’spoems, in which he confessed tofeeling like a “misfit in a world ofmechanical supermen,” or the imageof Charlie Chaplin in “Modern Times”being trapped in a gigantic flywheel.

UK: ???

Machines are useful tools, but alltoo often they turn into a fetish. Thereis an incessant push for ever greaterspeed, efficiency, streamlining, andindividual productivity. Productivityis today’s buzzword. Translation,which should be a joyful, creativeendeavor (what other motivationcould there be for anyone to exerthimself to master a foreign languageand become a professional trans-lator—surely not the prospect of fab-ulous wealth!) is degenerating into anobject of crass measurement. Thenumber of pages churned out, theoutput per day, month, and year—thatis becoming the criterion for the suc-cessful translator in the commercialmarketplace.

If you think I’m wildly exagger-ating, let me cite to you the very firstquestion I was asked during a jobinterview at the Berlitz office inPrinceton, New Jersey, some 20years ago: “What is your produc-tivity?”. I once heard a repellentterm used to describe the role thattranslators are expected to play inthe federal government: “units ofincome-producing capacity.” Or therésumés I saw recently at the ATAconference in Los Angeles listingthe number of words translated overa one-year period, as if translationwere akin to the act of selling realestate or used cars.

This mania for mechanization andquantification frightens me. But theprocess is rolling on relentlessly likea juggernaut. I don’t see how it can bereversed.

UK: In view of the problems youdescribe, do you regret pursuinglanguages as your career? What didyou gain by devoting yourself to thisfield?

I have no regrets over my choiceof career path, despite the difficultiesI encountered along the way.Studying languages was an irre-sistible urge to me. I would have doneit under any circumstances, regard-less of financial or other considera-tions. I am fortunate in being able tomake a living out of this strangeobsession.

What have I gained from thisfield? An appreciation for, and per-haps a little understanding of, othercultures...the opportunity to meetsome truly remarkable people withwhom I could communicate in theirown language...intellectual stimula-tion and a sense of adventure(learning an unfamiliar grammar tome is like exploring a virgin wilder-ness).

UK: Would you then recommendlanguages as a career for youngpeople?

Yes, if they have the genuinetalent, passion, and persistence. It’snot the easiest path to follow, but onethat offers many rewards.

UK: Do you have other professionalgoals we haven’t touched upon?Would you like to take up literarytranslation again?

To be frank, at this point in my lifeI feel more drawn to the human poten-tial movement, which I hate to call“New Age”; it’s such a trite term thatconjures up images of stoned hippies,chanting Hare Krishna, and othermedia stereotypes. There is an abun-dance of material in various lan-guages on subjects of great relevanceand interest (holistic medicine, forexample) which ought to be translatedand made available to the public, butwhich I fear may never see the light of


geographically estranged from theteam, are often the most isolated.The result is that the localizationprocess and the industry fall far shortof their potential to provide quality.For translators, this isolation can be asource of profound frustration.

Indeed, translators often, and toooften justifiably, complain about thesore lack of quality inherent in local-ized products, and the threat thatsuch a lack of quality represents tothe translation profession as awhole. Pride in their craft and in theage-old art of translation suffers. Itneed not.

PAL hopes to provide a forum inwhich the key role of translation inlocalization may be explored andbetter understood by both translatorsand other professionals involved inthe process. A better understandingof that role will go a long way towardaddressing translators’ quality con-cerns, finding solutions, andimproving overall quality.

In addition to quality concerns, andagain largely as a result of isolation,translators may not be aware of themarket, the price, or the cost of their

services in the context of localization.Business imperatives seem to becomemore stringent and “time-to-market”demands shrink with every project. Adialogue between the “market-makers” and those who bring theproduct to market would result in amutually beneficial alignment ofexpectations and reality. With theactive participation of a wide range oflocalization professionals, includingtranslators, PAL hopes to make thatdialogue possible. The potential out-comes of such a dialogue are enor-mous. New pricing models mayemerge as well as refinements to theprocess that would benefit everyoneon the vendor and the client side ofthe localization equation.

More and more, translators whospecialize in localization are askedto master increasingly complexcomputer-assisted translation (CAT),desktop publishing, and content man-agement tools, and wrangle with new-fangled file transfer utilities. Thelearning curve is steep, as is the finan-cial investment, particularly when thetechnical demands of the industrychange so rapidly. Again, a dialogue

between the developers of innovativetools and the end-users, translators,might result in better tools, a betterunderstanding of such tools, and anoverall improvement in the processand the product. PAL hopes to pro-vide a forum for such a dialogue.

In sum, PAL is dedicated toimproving the work environment ofall localization professionals, and tomaking sure that these professionalshonor their promise to deliver qualityto clients. To that end, closing thecircle of communication between allparticipants in the process and theindustry is a primary objective. Tomeet that objective and to ensure thatthe voices of translators are heard, theactive participation of translators inPAL is essential.

Just as localization relies on theprofessionalism of translators, onlywith the active involvement of trans-lators can PAL fulfill its mandate toits members. PAL invites translatorsto visit its site (www.pal10n.org) andto consider participating in thegrowth of the association.


day. I’d like to do my modest part toremedy that situation, if possible, bysetting up an international network oftranslators who share these ideals. Atpresent, I am collaborating with thePolish journal Nieznany Swiat (TheUnknown World), and was recentlycommissioned to translate a book onpsychic phenomena in Poland. In thefuture, I hope to accomplish evenmore in this area.

UK: The final question. By mycount, you’ve studied over 20 lan-guages up to now. Is there any otherlanguage you dream of learning oneday, a special favorite of yours?

This is going to seem weird toreaders, but I must confess: I have atremendous passion for Hawaiian. Eversince childhood, when I listened tothe TV program “Hawaii Calls”

broadcast live from the beach atWaikiki, I have loved the languageand music of that enchantedisle. There’s no other language in theworld I would rather speak. Anotherinexplicable quirk of mine, I suppose!

Joel Stern may be reached [email protected].

The Professional Association of Localization Continued from p.23


I n the Ivory Tower of the Academy,practical training is the inner stair-case of translation studies.

However, if the attention that is givento current practices in training classesis not balanced by disciplinary andresearch-oriented translation studies,the result can be, predictably, obso-lescent training, complacent trainers,half-educated trainees, and ill-servedclients. Obsolescence and compla-cency, which concern us here, bringthe risk of stultification and irrele-vance. Fortunately, the content inpracticum courses is, we assert,inherently self-destructing; other-wise, it would become an archeolog-ical site relevant only fordocumentary excavation. But whatcould happen if resources arediverted from translation studies,broadly defined, to a panoply ofworkshops? Institutionally speaking,possibly little might happen finan-cially in the short-term, because thecheck-and-balance systems of theAcademy work slowly. However,quite a great deal could happen in thelong-term regarding the loss ofresources. The latter could involveenergy deployment, where the riskbecomes the most dangerous, bothpersonally and consequently, formembers of the profession we serve.

Translation studies is an interdiscipline.

We referred earlier to an unbal-anced curriculum as a “panoply ofworkshops,” for panoply still keepsone of its original meanings: a coat ofarmor. Something rigid that needs onlyto be kept up, but not changed concep-tually. Translation studies is large andfluid. It must stay, we argue, alert andunthreatened on the stairwell of trans-lation studies, connecting to such dis-ciplines as anthropology, artificialintelligence, computer science, com-parative literature, creative writing,

linguistics, natural/national languages,philosophy, psychology, political sci-ence, professional education, andsociology (the list will vary fromcampus to campus). Therefore, itbehooves the profession to supportthe Academy. To this end, the ATAhas acted in an increasingly sup-portive manner: the AmericanFederation for Translation and Inter-pretation Scholarship Program, theStudent Translation Awards, the ATASeries, Proceedings, and Translation

Program Guide (edited by GertrudChampe). Bravo! Perhaps the time ispropitious for extracting some inlaysfrom the Ivory Tower, and some pre-cepts from these examples.

With that echo of SamuelJohnson’s Rasselas (1759: “Exampleis always more efficacious than pre-cept”), itself an echo of Aesop’s TheTwo Crabs, let us openly exploit thepedantry the Academy keeps acces-sible. A pedantic preface will illus-trate what the Ivory Tower (i.e., theAcademy), and the Academy alone,contributes to translation studies. Butafter that preface, I shall continuewith a brief description of Academyfunctions. Function 1: it storesaccrued information and makes itaccessible. Function 2: it institution-alizes systematically self-renewingstudies of what has accrued (i.e., thecurriculum), which includes theacquisition of skills and subjectmatter. Function 3, related to

Function 2, is the pursuit of newinformation, including creations ofartistry, scholarship, and thought.This pursuit of new knowledgeincludes the testing of empirical dataand the rethinking and reconceptual-izing of its bases. The Ivory Tower isswarming with activity around theclock and around the globe.

So why is association with theIvory Tower, if not an insult, at leastnot a compliment? Here is the prom-ised pedantry.

The Ivory Tower, albeit a Frenchimport, entails no particularFrancophile prestige. Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869)used the expression “tour d’ivoire”in the third of 16 stanzas dedicated toFrançois Villemain in Pensées d’août(August 1857). Sainte-Beuve, withtypically impeccable Alexandrinecouplets, was trying to explain whyhe had decided early on that he couldnot compete with the preceding gen-eration of French romantics. In thispoem he is trying to control and con-textualize his envy. In the thirdstanza, he contrasts the public per-sonae of Victor Hugo and Alfred deVigny. Hugo took a political standand stayed with it throughout his life,Sainte-Beuve maintained, whileVigny retreated to his ivory tower: EtVigny, plus secret,/Comme en sa tourd’ivoire, avant midi rentrait (“AndVigny, more covert,/As if to an ivorytower went in before noon.”)1

Why ivory tower? Sainte-Beuve, avoracious scholar who kept goodnotes and remembered accurately,knew the Bible, various Apocryphalwritings, and ancient history well.Ahab, Jezebel’s husband, is allegedto have built an ivory house (1 Kings10: xviii; 2 Kings 22: xxxix), pre-sumably using sun-dried bricks withivory inlays. The prophet Amos pre-dicts (3: xv) that Jehovah will smite

In Praise of the Ivory Tower

By Marilyn Gaddis Rose

…The Ivory Tower is atreasury…which providestranslators a resource that

is both a site and avantage point on reality…


“the winter house with the summerhouse,” and goes on to state that the“the houses of ivory shall perish.”Sainte-Beuve, although powerful asan arbiter of French literary tastefrom roughly 1834 (the year ofVolupté2) until his death in 1869,never had a literary reputationrivaling that of Hugo or Vigny, eitherwith his contemporaries or with hisposterity. He is remembered by spe-cialists for developing a recurringlypopular biographical critical method.

The year 1857 was a landmark yearin French letters: Flaubert’s MadameBovary was exonerated; Baudelaire’sLes Fleurs du Mal was condemned.But there is no echo in Pensées d’aoûtof the concerns of these writers, bothof whom, incidentally, Sainte-Beuvenotes. It is perhaps of interest that 1857marked the midway point in Sainte-Beuve’s own four years as a lecturer onFrench literature at the Ecole NormaleSupérieure. Nor, despite his catego-rization of the political engagement ofHugo and Vigny, is Sainte-Beuveremembered for his own politicalengagement (although, while a senatorduring the last four years of his life,1865-69, he spoke out for the freedomof the press). When did the expressionivory tower come to implicate theAcademy as a place of refuge for per-sons who want to avoid the real world?Roughly 40 years ago, according to theOxford English Dictionary, whichcredits Mary McCarthy’s The Group(1962).

In any event, when we see that thenext volume of the ATA Series willhave a pedagogical theme, “Beyondthe Ivory Tower,” we can confidentlyanticipate the subtext: getting outsideis good for translator training; stayinginside may even be harmful.

I beg to differ. Encountering “tour d’ivoire” in

French today and rendering it as

“ivory tower” in English may still bethe best translation. Yet frankly, Ithink the experience will be richer ifthe translator has a sense of how hisor her assignment may link to tradi-tion or break new ground. She or hewill not always have time to indulgein such a search, but the Academywill provide a lasting opportunity.

Let me illustrate with two experi-ments that you can try on your own,testing empirically the tentative con-clusion. These experiments willrelate to all three functions of theAcademy: the accessible storage ofinformation, the training in skills andsubject matter, and the pursuit of newinformation.

Experiment 1A: Reviewing Applications (An experiment which my fellowacademics can duplicate.)

For this experiment, I conducteda five-year review of recent inquiriesand completed student applications.I paid particular attention to applica-tions from students, usually interna-tional students, who were lookingfor a doctoral program in transla-tion. When I came across such anapplication, I also studied my replyto the student. In my replies, I typi-cally described other programs thatmight be better suited to what thestudent wanted. In one case, I madeit clear to the student, who had com-pleted a master’s level training quatraining program elsewhere, that atBinghamton University one must havea commitment to the host disciplineand that, above all, our program wouldnot consist of more of the same typeof training they had just received.Only twice in the past quarter cen-tury, through Admissions Committeeinadvertence, have we found in ourmidst a properly enrolled studentwho had completed a two-year

master’s program composed entirelyof practical training courses, and whomust have thought that our depart-mental doctoral degree requirementswere negotiable. These two studentswere highly intelligent, and we wereflexible. But they did not really knowanything except translation practicebeyond their B.A., and, I wouldargue, as a result, they had a lot tolearn contextually to bring theiractual translating up to our stan-dards.3 (One received a Ph.D. in duecourse. The other case is pending.) Iwould go so far as to claim that mostof their prior M.A. practicum courseswere misguided, and could have prof-itably been replaced by courses inother disciplines. ➡

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Experiment 1B: Reviewing Alumni/ae Status(An experiment which fellow academics can duplicate.)

We have annually polledalumni/ae status since the fall of1980. Although only 20% of ouralumni/ae make translation a centralpart of their career, I have confirmedthat all of our international doctoralrecipients and A.B.D.’s, as well asM.A. recipients who continued with adoctorate in their home country, areengaged in translator training. I con-clude that our Ivory Tower cur-riculum must have established theright momentum and research habits.

Experiment 2: Reviewing ATA Proceedings(An experiment which any ATA member can duplicate.)

I took “Horizons,” the theme ofthe Proceedings of ATA’s 32ndAnnual Conference in 1991 (Ref. 4).I chose it for two reasons: 1) I had noessay in it; and 2) it gives the contentsa 10-year time span in which tobecome outdated or survive. Therewere 46 entries, and all had some-thing to offer at the time. Twenty-onetimely essays, chiefly those tied toelectronic technology (eight were onworkstations), were destined to beoutdated shortly after publication.Ten more essays, regarding practicesthat were either linked to electronics

(e.g., running a business, using dic-tionaries, or to a changing termi-nology) were outdated as well. Theremaining entries still have some-thing to offer. Indeed, the essays ofDouglas Robinson, Sergio Viaggio,and one jointly authored by CarolMaier and Françoise Massardier-Kenney made points related to theargument I am making now.Furthermore, Kenneth Good’s“Language to Language: Translatinga World View. The Yanomami ofAmazonia, Venezuela” is enthralling.I urge everyone who missed it then togo back to it now.

There are at least two conclusionsto be drawn from this 1991Proceedings review. First, practicaltraining still belongs as part of ATA’scontinuing education mission. Second,practical training has, or should have,ephemeral content. It is one thing todevote time at a professional meetingto the latest trends and skills. It isanother thing to get them inserted intoa curriculum which must serve thethree functions mentioned at theoutset: as a repository of accrued infor-mation; as a place for the systematicstudy of subject matter and skillsacquisition; and as an incubator of newinformation (including creations ofartistry, scholarship, and thought).

ConclusionNothing institutionally prevents an

academic program from hiring practi-tioners for units of a practicum.Nothing institutionally prevents stu-dents from seeking internships,locally or distant, with firms willingto monitor beginners.

However, I would argue that suchunits should not replace coursework,either in the disciplines from whichtranslation studies derive or in disci-plines in which the prospective trans-lator might serve.

Sainte-Beuve to the contrary, theIvory Tower is a treasury, not, I trust,endangered, which provides transla-tors a resource that is both a site anda vantage point on reality. It behoovestranslators to claim their allegianceand cherish it.

Notes1. He places Lamartine above both

Hugo and Vigny in this stanza. Infact, Vigny withdrew from publiclife after 1838, although he stoodfor election following the 1848Revolution (Refs. 1, 2). At thetime of his death in 1916, HenryJames left an unfinished novel, setin Newport, Rhode Island, withthe title The Ivory Tower (1922).He began the novel at the turn ofthe century, but dropped it whenWorld War I began.

2. Volupté was acclaimed by writerslike Baudelaire, Flaubert, andProust, but is rarely read (Ref. 3).

3. We use texts comparable to anACTFL high 3 or 4.

References1. Sainte-Beuve, C-A. 1869. Poésies

complètes. Paris. Charpentier.

2. Saulnier, Verdun I., ed. 1963. LesDestinée d’Alfred de Vigny.Genève. Droz.

3 Allem, Maurice, ed. 1934.Volupté. Paris. Garnier Frères. InVolupté. The Sensual Man. 1995.Translated by Marilyn GaddisRose. Albany: State University ofNew York Press.

4 Willson, A. Leslie, ed. 1991.Learned Information. Medford,New Jersey.

In Praise of the Ivory Tower Continued

It pays ...

to keep your listings updated in the ATA’s online Directory of Translation and Interpreting Services andDirectory of Language ServicesCompanies

(www.atanet.org)


(Note: The following originallyappeared in the Book World sectionof The Washington Post [Sunday,April 28, 2002, page BW10]. It isreprinted here with permission.)

H ow’s this for an occupationaltestimonial: “There is no suchthing as a good translator. The

best translators make the worst mis-takes. No matter how much I lovethem, all translators must be closelywatched.”

Or this: “O ye translators, do notsodonymize us!”

Or: “Traduttore-traditore.” (Trans-lator = traitor.)

Who are these people everyoneloves to hate, and, if they’re so bad,how do they get away with whatthey’re doing?

Well, I confess: I’m one of them.I’m a translator.

And our accusers? The patronizingquote at the very top comes from IsaacBashevis Singer. Later in his career(1978), thanks to a host of translators,he received the Nobel Prize forLiterature and changed his tune:“Since every language contains its ownunique truths,” he admitted, “transla-tion is the very spirit of civilization.”

Next comes Milan Kundera, thereigning bête noire of our fraternity,who sheds translators the way snakesshed skin, and is said to devotealmost as much time to overseeingforeign editions of his work as hedoes to writing (in the quote above,he is inveighing against a translator’sdecision to use a synonym from timeto time).

Finally, we must thank the Italiansfor reminding us that every transla-tion is a betrayal. Is this a great job,or what?

Oh, sure, Pushkin called us“couriers of the human spirit,” andGoethe referred to literary translation

as “one of the most important anddignified enterprises in the generalcommerce of the world.” But theirswas a kinder, gentler age. Morerecently, Jorge Luis Borges, whoserelationship with his English trans-lator, Norman Thomas Di Giovanni,resembled nothing so much as aStephen King novel, wrote in a sur-prisingly positive vein: “The trans-lator’s work is more subtle, morecivilized than that of the writer: thetranslator clearly comes after thewriter. Translation is a more advancedstage of writing.”

It’s been my experience that mostwriters at least tolerate the men andwomen given the task of rewriting—for that is surely the nature of transla-tion—their work into other languages.Sometimes, however rarely, a per-sonal relationship between author andtranslator grows out of the project,whether as cordial as that between,say, Umberto Eco and WilliamWeaver, or as destructive as thatbetween Borges and Di Giovanni. Insome cases, the writer has beenknown to marry his translator! To wit,Jose Saramago and his translator fromPortuguese to Spanish, Pilar Del Rio,who live and work happily on aremote island.

I count as friends a few novelistswhose work I’ve translated from theChinese. In part that is a result of thetrust the authors—few of whom readEnglish—have placed in me, and in

part it is due to their willingness to dealwith inevitable queries regarding diffi-culties, even errors, in their texts. MoYan, for instance, whose Red Sorghumbrought him international recognitionin the early 1990s, is one of those gra-cious individuals who sings the praisesof his translator as often as his trans-lator sings his as a novelist. Well awareof the impossibility of a one-to-onecorrespondence between Chinese andEnglish, he is always helpful inrevealing obscure cultural and histor-ical aspects of his work, and compre-hends the unavoidable fact that atranslation can only complement, notreplicate, the original. And yet the rela-tionship cannot help but be fragile,given an author’s desire to have hiswork reach the broadest possible audi-ence with the exact effect it had on itsoriginal readers. Too often, that desireis accompanied by absolute ignoranceabout the nature of translation, or a dis-dain for it, or a combination of the two.

One writer whose novel I trans-lated to a satisfying measure ofacclaim is said to have assumed thatthe name that appeared under his onthe title page actually assigned thetranslation to his Chinese students. Hethen simply polished the English forpublication. Since he and I have nevermet, I can only guess that for him, andfor other Chinese writers, the idea thatthere might be someone out here whonot only knows both languages well,but who actually considers the enter-prise as something more than a stu-dent’s exercise, and takes pride indoing it well, is truly alien.

Of course, that writer may havereasons for believing what he does. Iremember, back in 1981 while I wasteaching at UCLA, hearing a similarstory from a young graduate studentwho was in the first post-CulturalRevolution contingent to come to theUnited States. He recounted

The Writing Life

By Howard Goldblatt

…Translation isinadequate, but it’s all wehave if good writing is to

have its life extended,spatially and temporally…

➡


being part of a project to translateJoseph Heller’s Catch-22 intoChinese. Since the administrator hadonly one copy of the book, he tore itapart and handed it out to the mem-bers of a class, one chapter per stu-dent. Why not? It’s only a translation!

On another occasion, Mobil Oilcommissioned me to translate aprize-winning book on economicreforms (translators can’t always bechoosy). The author had little knowl-edge of the outside world and knewme only by my Chinese name. Wespoke several times on the phone andcorresponded in Chinese frequentlyover the many months it took me toslog through 600-plus pages of indus-trial and bureaucratic prose. Finally,after compiling a list of localisms andconcepts with which I was unfa-miliar, I wrote for his help. That’swhen it hit him: I was a foreigner andtherefore didn’t really know Chinese!The return letter could not have beenmore condescending if it had beenwritten to a 10-year-old.

Translators may well agree withGeorge Steiner’s observation that“Ninety percent of all translation isinadequate,” but only as an acknowl-edgment that, once threshed into a dif-ferent language, a piece of writing istransformed, changed, and not as ameasure of the quality of our work.Translation is inadequate, but it’s allwe have if good writing is to have itslife extended, spatially and temporally.

Translation is, of course, an unfin-ished project, while an original workis frozen in time at the moment ofpublication. Unlike musical composi-tions or dramas, however, novels andpoems are not written to be reper-formed or recreated; they are, in asense, irreplaceable. That we mustnonetheless replace them, if theworks are to have wider readership, isa given. How translators go about the

task, how we deal with the intricaciesof cross-cultural communication—these are the things at issue.

A case in point is the word ketou(literally, to knock one’s head loudlyon the floor). While “kowtow” is oneof those rare Chinese words that hasmade it into the English lexicon,Western readers cannot know therange of contexts, nuances, and tonesthat give it its evocative power inChinese. One kowtows out of rever-ence, fear, remorse, gratitude, andmore, and the translator is obliged tosomehow capture the particular sensein each instance in ways that aresubtle and apt.

Some languages can resist ade-quate translation—the words aresimply unavailable or inefficient—while other languages may providericher choices. In a novel I recentlyco-translated with Sylvia Li-chunLin—Red Poppies, by the ethnicTibetan Alai—a mild oath used by allcharacters is “Tian na!” The closestliteral (and obviously inadequate)English rendering is “Heavens!”After wrestling with several possibil-ities, we decided to have each char-acter say something different, inlanguages that—for each context—worked better than English. We used“Ai caramba!” “Ach du lieber!”“Mama mia!” “Oy gevalt!” and,even, “Merde!” Alas, we couldn’t getthem past the editor. Damn!

Sometimes, of course, a transla-tion can enhance a work in ways theauthor never imagined. GabrielGarcía Márquez has said he prefersGregory Rabassa’s English transla-tion of One Hundred Years of Solitudeto the Spanish original, to whichRabassa replied, “That is probablyless of a compliment to my transla-tion than it is to the English lan-guage.” James Thurber tipped his hatanother way: When told by a French

reader that his stories read even betterin French, he replied, “Yes, I tend tolose something in the original.”

I am sometimes asked why I trans-late, since to many it seems a thank-less vocation. Why, they ask, don’t Iwrite my own novels, since I havelived (they assume) an interesting lifeand must by now have an idea ofwhat a novel should be? I can onlysay that not all translators are closetnovelists, and that I do not considertranslation to be a lesser art—one thatought to lead to something better. Theshort, and very personal, answer tothe question is: Because I love it. Ilove to read Chinese. I love to writein English. I love the challenge, theambiguity, the uncertainty of theenterprise. I love the tension betweencreativity and fidelity, even theinevitable compromises. And, everyonce in a while, I find a work soexciting that I’m possessed by theurge to put it into English. In otherwords, I translate to stay alive. Thesatisfaction of knowing I’ve faithfullyserved two constituencies keeps mehappily turning good, bad, and indif-ferent Chinese prose into readable,accessible, and—yes—even mar-ketable English books. Tian na!

The Writing Life Continued

It’s Not Too Early To PlanATA’s 43rd AnnualConferenceHyatt Regency Hotel

Atlanta, Georgia

November 6-9, 2002


Today’s Special: Menu Medley

The Onionskin is a client education column launched by the ITI Bulletin (a publication of the U.K.’s Institute ofTranslation and Interpreting) in 1996. Comments and leads for future columns are very welcome; please include fullcontact details. Contact: [email protected] or fax +33 1 43 87 70 45.

The Onionskin By Chris Durban

S kewed menu translations are astock feature of the foreignrestaurant experience. For

some food lovers, these bloopershave a charm all their own, from the“scorched moss” (mousse brulée) onthe dessert trolley in a three-starrestaurant in Lille to “Spaghetti withShort-necked clam” at a luxury hotelin Kyoto. The former is a caramelmousse; the latter appears to be aback-translation of a Japanese ren-dering of littleneck clams (quahogs).

Unraveling the source of sucherrors is all part of the fun. But it isalso an excellent way to focus diners’(and caterers’) attention on the art oftranslation.

Glitches pop up on menus for thesame reasons translation mistakescreep into operating manuals andbrochures. And while translationsoftware may be the culprit at times,The Onionskin is convinced thathuman error is most often to blame.In some cases, time or budget con-straints lead uninformed buyers tospring for a quick fix. In others, lan-guage service providers get in overtheir heads, or unfortunate typos arenot caught in time (“banana spit” in aParisian café).

This month’s haul includes adubious “skirt of veal in oysterfungus” served at L’Étude, an other-wise cozy restaurant in the easternFrench city of Metz. The descriptionappears in a half-page listing in theMay 2002 edition of a guide to fineeating published by La FranceGourmande. When we phoned, therestaurant manager confessed he hadnot seen the English text himself; hehad bought the ad space from thepublishers, who in turn commis-sioned the translation. He promisedto look into the matter (and highly

recommends the onglet de veau auxpleurotes; tasty stuff, made withoyster mushrooms). La FranceGourmande maintained a stonysilence, but all signs point to an ama-teur linguist and a non-native at that:the guide’s blurb burbles on“[L’Étude’s] pike-perch steak inmatelote and Gaillac wine willintrigue you as the nouveau romanyou once read.”

For restaurants eager to ensurethat their foreign-language menuslive up to the specialties they prepareand serve with loving care, a U.K.translator, Ros Schwartz, MITI,offers a few tips on getting it right.

• When working into a foreign lan-guage—especially English—youwill probably have to be far moreexplicit. Remember, English-speaking tourists sampling French,Spanish, or Chinese specialtiesusually have none of the culturalreferences that names of regionaldishes summon up in their homecountries. If it’s beef casserole inred wine sauce, say so.

• For complex dishes, consider simplylisting ingredients with a brief indi-cation to how they are cooked (fried/grilled/simmered/steamed, etc.).

• Be sure to select the language anddialect most appropriate for yourtarget clients. For English alone,there are U.S., U.K., Australian,and Canadian variants, and more.Similar considerations apply tomany other languages.

• As with any translation, rememberto give translators full back-ground information, answer theirquestions, and arrange for them

to check layouts before going to press.

A more proactive approach at thenational level might also be in order.Language consultant Steve Dysonfeels it is time for Ministries ofTourism to assist hoteliers and restau-rateurs in countries committed totourism by posting validated andtested equivalents of standard dishes,famous specialties, etc., in a selectionof languages on their website.Catering professionals could then beencouraged to download and usethese glossaries as an alternative toasking their cousin’s nephew, justback from three months in CountryX, to translate their menus.

But wait a minute—who careswhat the menu says as long as the foodis good? As one observer notes, menuswith foreign-language approximationscobbled together by an intrepid familymember can be an indication that therestaurant’s priority is indeed cooking,not advertising.

Fair enough. Yet The Onionskin isconvinced that a more cosmopolitanapproach could well pay for itself inthe end, especially for restaurantspitching themselves at the pricier endof the market.

Undercover in AustinFor years Mauricio A. López

Langenbach, a professional translatorin Austin, Texas, has cringed at thepoor Spanish-language signage in thecity’s public transport system, operatedby Capital Metro. Spelling mistakes,false cognates, grammar problems, andanglicisms abound, he writes (no cruzepor delante instead of no cruce pordelante; use precaución instead oftenga precaución). But it was a ➡


reference to policías clandestinos thattriggered a concerted effort to shedlight on the matter.

In this case, Capital Metro’s signwas intended to reassure travelersthat they were in safe hands: itinformed commuters that undercoverpolice officers were on buses to helpfight crime. Unfortunately, clandes-tino in Spanish has the same meaningas “clandestine” in English—hardlyan appropriate way to describe thework of a police officer. The mistakewas all the more regrettable, saysLópez, in that a standard term exists:policías encubiertos. In October hewrote to tell Capital Metro as much,and was promptly put in his place bycustomer relations manager AnitaGarcia.

Whereas Capital Metro had previ-ously relied solely on professionaltranslators’ input, said Ms. Garcia,this was due to the lack of Spanish-speaking staff to review work. Thingswere better now, since “for the pastfew years, we have Spanish-speakingstaff that review all translations putforth to the public. Regarding yourinference to the word ‘clandestino,’our Spanish-speaking staff felt thiswas a better word to use as opposedto ‘encubierto,’ which can also meancovering up something negative,”said Ms. Garcia.

Not so, replied Mr. López. Thecontext rules out negative connota-tions for encubierto; furthermore,clandestino always has a negativenuance. Even more important, heinsisted, is the fact that policía encu-bierto is THE term used throughoutthe Spanish-speaking world to refer toan undercover police officer. Lópezappended a string of website links tohis e-mail to back up this claim. Hereceived no reply.

The incident highlights a growingproblem in countries with largeimmigrant populations, where bilin-guals are often drafted into service aslanguage needs arise.

Regardless of oral fluency,research shows that self-proclaimedbilinguals nearly always overestimatetheir skills. Many—some observerssay most—simply do not have thewriting and language transferexpertise needed to produce goodtranslations. Speaking ain’t writing.Yet given persistent and widespreadignorance of exactly what translationis and how it is done, well-meaningvolunteers can be tempted to jump into “lend a hand.” It can also be diffi-cult for people perceived as bilin-guals at the workplace to admit inpublic that their writing skills are notup to the task.

When The Onionskin calledCapital Metro, Dianne Galaviz,director of business and communitydevelopment, expressed surprise.Indeed, her explanation of corporatetranslation policy contradicts that ofMs. Garcia, who appears to havegone underground (another stafferindicated that Garcia left the com-pany several months back).

Ms. Galaviz speculates that theflawed signs were drafted prior toSeptember 2001. “Until then, mostpassenger notices were, in fact,reviewed, or even produced, in-houseby our Spanish-speaking staff mem-bers,” she told us. It was not a satis-factory situation, and on September30, the board approved a budget forbringing in professional translationservices. Her team now works closelywith freelance translator CesarGarces and is delighted with hisinput, she says, noting that while in-house Spanish speakers (of whom

she is one) may provide initial input,they defer to his final judgment.

“Communicating accurately andappropriately with our city’s Spanish-speaking population is something weat Capital Metro take very seriously,”Dianne Galaviz assured us. Legacysignage notwithstanding, the com-pany certainly seems intent on get-ting its translation act together. Ms.Galaviz welcomes feedback, but—significantly, in our opinion—hasreceived only two complaints on lan-guage issues in her three years on thejob. Clearly Mr. López’s proactiveresponse remains an exception. Isn’tit time for more linguists to speak up?

More Signs of the Times?Confirmation that signs pose par-

ticular problems in translation camewith a reader’s snapshot of a parkingarea outside Assisi in Italy. The photoshows a bilingual sign detailing thecost of parking and related fines in nouncertain terms. Well, almost:

Tariff relevant to 1 h £.1500. Incase of missed payment of tariff orexpired parking time, for thetrasgresgression will give a sunc-tion according what prescribed bytraffic low.

Our contact at the Assisi town hallestimates the cost of designing, pro-ducing, and installing the panel itselfat around €25,000 ($22,800). Alas, hecould provide no information on thetranslation budget or supplier, but allsigns point to an inside job.

In practical terms, once a text hasbeen painted, stamped, or engravedonto a sheet of metal or plastic, it islikely to remain in place for years.

Continued on p.47

The Onionskin Continued


Literary Translation. A Practical GuideAuthor:Clifford E. LandersPublisher:Multilingual Matters, UTP, 22550Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150Publication date:December 2001ISBN:1-85359-519-5Price:$19.95 paperback; $59.95 hardcover

Reviewed by:Marilyn Gaddis Rose

T his book is a jewel, displayingin its facets (if the conceit maybe pardoned): artistry, hard-

headedness, patience, common sense,courage, and charm.

The artistry comes from Mr.Landers’ examples, usually from hisown acclaimed translations fromBrazilian Portuguese.

The hardheadedness comes from hisblunt warnings about the slight mone-tary rewards of literary translation.

The patience comes from his expla-nations, which must be recastings ofincredibly naïve questions. He is nevercondescending or superior (only oncedoes he say “If you have to ask…”).

The common sense comes fromhis resolute problem solving and per-sistent pursuit of accuracy and appro-priate rhetoric.

His courage shows in his taking astand against foreignizing. He doesnot equate foreignizing with politicalcorrectness. On the contrary, hisexamples show his acute sensitivityto issues of race, class, gender, andcultural pride.

His words charm throughout.Those who know him will treasure

this guide because they can hear hisvoice. Those who do not will want tomeet him because they can tell thatthis guide will be a friend.

Obviously, and above all, anyonecan learn from Landers’ guide.Although it is meant for beginningand intermediate translators, evenseasoned translators and other trans-lator guides (who may be his seniors)will learn from it. When Landersthinks a peer has already encapsu-lated a piece of advice as well as pos-sible, he quotes with due credit.

So how and where does Landersguide?

First of all, he begins with theassumption that his readers know thesource language well and are nativespeakers, or nearly so, in the targetlanguage. Then he takes up “TheFundamentals,” where he points outthe uniqueness and unique satisfac-tion of literary translation. He tellsbeginners how to start in this field,emphasizing the need for gettingwritten permission for material not inthe public domain. Since this issuecomes up annually at the ATA Honorsand Awards, these two pages shouldprobably have been printed in day-gloorange. In this section he acknowl-edges his indebtedness to Robert Bly,John Felstiner, and Alexis Levitin.However, the personal charm comesfrom his own translation of NightDrive, which opens the section, andof A Day in the Life of a LiteraryTranslator (himself), which appearsin the next to last entry of this section.

The second section, “Techniquesof Translation,” accounts for morethan half of the guide. Here Landerstakes his stand on readability. He isdubious about “foreignizing,” whichhe refers to as “resistance” trans-lating, and coins “targeteers” and

“sourcerers” to designate translatorswho have a pronounced orientation.What he demonstrates as he takes upregister, tone, cultural cues, puns,pornography, and dialect is that atranslator’s experience, taste, andflair are called upon case-by-case.What makes literary translation exhil-arating is that it cannot be codified.He also demonstrates that fluency inthe source language requires immer-sion, humility, and a sound grasp oftraditional grammars. He makes itclear by implication that if translatorsare unaware of traditional grammars,they will be unlikely to spot devia-tions. (This is not a dull section—i.e.,readers will laugh aloud at his exam-ples!). He emphasizes the need tosometimes be a perfectionist. A goodguess may sound good and seem log-ical, but translators cannot fall backon fatigue or deadlines as excuses.Nor can they afford false pride. Theymust keep up dictionary searches andfind native speakers. Whether theytranslate contemporary literature ormaterial in the public domain, theyneed to reimmerse themselves in theirsource language regularly. This sec-tion also includes advice on proof-reading, second opinions, andsubmissions. Landers strongly urgesreading the translation aloud both tooneself and to an informed listener.Proofing and revising, he admon-ishes, must be done from hard copy.

The final section, “The WorkingTranslator,” comprises roughly thelast sixth of the book. Here are foundLanders’ views on references, dic-tionaries, electronic aids, time budg-eting, taxes, contracts, etc. There is agood bibliography, a helpful glossary,and an appendix on ethical questions.

Does this jewel have any flaws?Oh, there were a couple of

Silversteyn is chair of the ATA Dictionary Review Committee.

Dictionary Reviews Compiled by Boris Silversteyn

➡


Dictionary Reviews Continued

places where the spellchecker passedon the wrong word correctly spelled.(And this reviewer thinks the Englishtitle of Camus’s L’ Etranger is thebetter solution [140], and she wouldhave used a nominative case pronoun[85, 1.21].) In short, althoughLanders points out early that literarytranslation is an ephemeral art (10ff),his guide should have a long anduseful life.

Dahl’s Law DictionaryDictionnaire juridique Dahlfrançais-anglais/French-EnglishSecond editionAuthor: Henry Saint DahlPublisher: William S. Hein & Co., Buffalo, andEditions Dalloz, ParisPublication date: 2001ISBN: 1-57588-674-X

Reviewed by: Tom West

T he problems with this Frenchlegal dictionary begin on itscover, which labels it as being

“Français-Anglais/French-English,”implying that it only translates in onedirection, when in fact it containsboth a French-to-English and anEnglish-to-French section. This kindof lack of attention to detail is evidentthroughout the book: accents areincorrect (ètre instead of être on thetitle page, celà instead of cela in theintroduction), as are capitalization(referring to the language as leFrançais—which means “the French-man”—instead of as le français) andpunctuation (instructif, utile, et pra-tique instead of instructif, utile et pra-tique). In the bibliography, even thetitle of one of the author’s own writ-ings is misspelled (La Facilite sous leChapitre 11; facilite is apparentlymeant to be faillite, i.e., bankruptcy).

The dictionary boasts that it isannotated and includes “definitionsfrom codes, case law, statutes, andlegal writing.” Apparently what thecompiler did was to take selectionsfrom various French-language trea-tises on French law and translatethem, very poorly, into English. Thus,on page 8, under the entry acompteset arrhes (which is translated as “pay-ments on account and earnest”—presumably the author meant to put“earnest money”), we find an expla-nation that begins like this: “It oftenhappens that the buyer pays to hisvendor, at the moment of sale, a moreor less large amount towards theprice. Such payments on accountshould be distinguished from earnestproperly so-called.” Obviously, this isa dreadful translation from a Frenchtext. Another example: under actejuridique we read that “most of thelegal regulations which exist amongmen spring from juridical acts.”Perhaps one of the worst pieces ofgobbledygook in the book can be

found under mobilisation du créditfoncier, which the author explainslike this: “The protecting rules of thecivil law which attache [sic] a greatvalue to the security of funds investedin realty makes of the mortgage aninstrument of credit a bit difficult tomanage.” One comes away fromentries like these with the sense thatthe author should have hired a trans-lator and that the publisher should beashamed for putting a compendiumof nonsense like this on the market.

Interspersed among these “ency-clopedic” entries are all sorts of fillerterms, many of which are not onlyout of place in a law dictionary, butalso very weird. Examples include:boire au goulot (to drink straightfrom the bottle); mère abusive (pos-sessive mother); décérébrer (to lobot-omize); abri souterrain (air-raidshelter); cabinet de toilette (dressingroom with sink); rayon hommes(men’s department); chaînes à neige(tire chains for use in snow); andéchelle, être au sommet de l’ (to be atthe top of the ladder). Obviously,translators do not turn to a legal dic-tionary for terms like these, and it ishard to even conceive of how theyfound their way into this book.

And then there is the problem ofentries that are completely wrong.For example, Code Napoléon is trans-lated as “Napoleon Code,” eventhough almost any general Frenchdictionary would give you the correcttranslation: “Napoleonic Code.”Contrat synallagmatique et uni-latéral, itself a confusing entry, istranslated as “reciprocal and unilat-eral contract,” implying that there issuch a thing, when in fact a contractis either synallagmatique or uni-latéral. The two terms are opposites,and a contract cannot be both any

Marilyn Gaddis Rose, 1988 GodeMedallist, is founding director of theTranslation Research and InstructionProgram (TRIP) at the State Universityof New York at Binghamton, where sheis a distinguished service professor ofcomparative literature. TRIP, foundedin 1971, shared the 1981 Gode Medalwith Georgetown and Monterey. Shewas founding editor of the ATA Seriesand edits the biennial TranslationPerspectives. Her most recent publicationis Translation and Literary Criticism(Manchester: St. Jerome, 1997). Contact: [email protected].


more than a person can be fat andskinny at the same time. Garde desSceaux, which refers to the Ministerof Justice in France (i.e., the equiva-lent of the Attorney General in theU.S.), is simply translated as “Keeperof the Seals” without any furtherexplanation. This is precisely a casewhere an encyclopedic entry wouldhave been helpful. I would also notethat the term Garde des Sceaux istranslated correctly in several of mygeneral French-English dictionaries.

Finally, there is the problem ofwhat the dictionary does not include:basic terms from corporate law, suchas assemblée spéciale and assembléemixte; or phraseology from civil pro-cedure that is very difficult to trans-late, such as statuant avant dire droitand sous toutes réserves dont acte.Instead, the book is filled with poortranslations, filler terms, mistransla-tions, and even encyclopedic entriesthat provide details that seem com-pletely unnecessary. An example of

the latter is the entry under crimecommis à l’étranger (crime committedabroad), where the author informs usthat: “any French citizen who outsidethe territory of the Republic commitsan act qualified as a crime punishableby French law may be prosecuted andjudged by the French courts.” It is hardto imagine why anyone would needthis information, especially since it isfairly obvious.

Does this dictionary have anyredeeming qualities whatsoever?Well, the encyclopedic entries thatthe author identifies as having beentaken from the book Civil Procedurein France (by Peter Herzog) areexcellent—probably because thatbook was written in English and therewas no need to translate the entriesbefore including them in this dic-tionary. For example, the explanationof tribunal de grande instance takenfrom that book is very complete andinformative. However, given theother enormous problems with Dahl’s

dictionary, I certainly would not buyit, and would invest my money inCivil Procedure in France instead.

Thomas L. West, the president of ATA, isan attorney and translator in Atlanta,Georgia. After practicing corporate andinternational law for five years, hefounded Intermark Language ServicesCorporation, a translation company spe-cializing in legal translation. He has abachelor’s degree in French, a master’sdegree in German, and a law degree fromthe University of Virginia School of Law.He has taught courses on French legaltranslation at Georgia State University, aswell as courses on German legal transla-tion for the German Translators Forum inChicago, and Spanish legal translation atthe Centro de Estudios de LingüísticaAplicada in Mexico City and the Colegiode Traductores Públicos in Buenos Aires.He is ATA-accredited (French-, Spanish-,and German-into-English). Contact: [email protected].

The more expensive the physical com-ponents of a sign, the less likely it isthat authorities will bother correctingerrors without a public outcry. Whichis all the more reason to get it right thefirst time around, by commissioningwork from a qualified supplier.

Readers will recall an Onionskintip-off concerning a flawed sign inHebrew at London’s Heathrow air-port in 1998. Airport authorities notonly welcomed the feedback, butinvited an expert team in for a

general review of its non-English sign-age in all terminals. The group discov-ered spelling and grammar mistakes invirtually all European languages ondisplay, including signs that had beenin place for a decade or more. Furtherinvestigation revealed that many of thebumpy texts had been supplied by resi-dents of a refugee center near the air-port, while non-native typesetters hadmuddied the waters further.Fortunately, airport signage reliesheavily on pictograms.

Clearing this language business ismore complicated than it looks.

The Onionskin Continued from p.44

With thanks to Veronica Albin, CiaranManning, Ellen Moerman, and Marius Novi.

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D o you lie awake nights wor-rying about the future of somelanguage dear to your heart?

Don’t. Not long ago, the TranslationInquirer was wandering around theInternet and came across a scholarlyarticle on the evolution of languages.Evolutionary lines, stated the author,never cross. That is to say, despite hisobvious awareness of the phenom-enon of borrowing, this scholar hasnever encountered an instance inwhich one language absorbed anotherand annihilated it. To this learnedstatement, the Translation Inquireradds an educated guess that bor-rowing from one language intoanother is precisely the same as a fadin popular culture. Probably theSpanglish of today will have disap-peared by, say, 2150, leaving behindonly a few sturdy Anglo words forwhich no Spanish substitute can befound. What may be a little alarmingto think about is just what culturalfactors may some day cause Englishto no longer have the faddish appeal itobviously has in many cultures. Butthere seems little doubt that, givenenough time, the fad will fade.

[Abbreviations used with this column:E-English; F-French; G-German; I-Italian; Pt-Portuguese; R-Russian;Sp-Spanish.]

New Queries(F-E 6-02/1) It’s obviously an

uneasy hybrid from the world offinance, with one foot on each side ofThe Sleeve: the term “holding faîtière”required both a translation and anexplanation for this ProZ subscriber.

(G-E 6-02/2) What are we tomake, asks Cappie, of a sentence in acontract stating that “Auf den Zugangder Erklärung zum Zwecke der

Wirksamkeit der Verkaufsoptionverzichtet der Partner ausdrücklich”?Is the partner declining for the pur-pose of speeding up some sort of pro-ceeding? Cappie suspects some suchsubtext to the bare statement thatmakes up this clause.

(Pt-E 6-02/3) From the world offashion comes this query about“intarcias,” as posed by a ProZmember: “contrapondo-se intarciascom riscos diagonais.”

(R-E 6-02/4) Andy Isaacs can’tfind hftiybr anywhere, and alsocannot escape dealing with it in thefollowing quote because it acts as thekeystone of the entire sentence struc-ture: "nf ufptnf ,scnhj hfcregfkfcmbp-pf ltitdbpys> b bp-pf cdjtujcnbkz gthtlfxb df;ys[ cj,snbq dajhvt hftiybrf> ukegj dscvtb-dfdituj b nj> xnj cktljdfkjdscvtznm> b nj> j xtv cktljdfkj ujd-jhbnm njkmrj cthmtpyj. He’s right; theentire thought is set up in such a waythat without solid clues from ourreaders, it can’t be put right without aclear definition of the mystery word.

(Sp-E 6-02/5) A ProZ correspon-dent had difficulty with “motor deencendido provocado” in an article heworked on in the area of alternativefuel engines. Here is the context heprovides: “…la obtenación de energíamecánica en un motor de encendidoprovocado acoplado a un alternador.”This critter uses lignocellulose bio-mass fuel.

Replies to Old Queries(E-Sp 8-01/7) (S.U.V.): As did the

station wagons that preceded them,SUVs were both for sport and forutility. But, reasons Renato Calderón,it is a safe bet that most SUV mileageis employed in prosaic tasks such astaking children and other families to

school and shopping. Therefore, the“vehículo de utilidad deportiva” sug-gested by Celina on page 56 of theOctober 2001 ATA Chronicle, doesn’tquite cut it because it refers only to asport utility vehicle. He sticks withhis “vehículo utilitario deportivo,”because it most closely applies to theEnglish definition.

A numerical equivalent for thiscomes from Major Lezlie L. Parra deShackell. The simple designator of“quatro por quatro” (4 x 4) has beenused for all SUV types in any countrywhere he has ever lived.

(E-Sp 10-01/3) (commuter): KathrynLugo is right, says Renato Calderón, inbelieving that “pasajero” is too generalan equivalent. It is limited only to themeaning of one who travels whilepaying a fare. The original meaningwas a person who went from home towork and back while using a commuta-tion ticket, but now expands to includethose who go by car, obviously withouta ticket, except perhaps for tolls.Renato likes “viajante cotidiano,” adaily traveler. Otherwise, a lengthyexplanation-type translation would beneeded, such as the cumbersome “via-jante o pasajero cotidiano que viajadiariamente, por cualquier medio, entresu hogar y su trabajo, y viceversa.”

(E-Sp 10-01/4) (sundowning, asin Alzheimer’s patients): RenatoCalderón prefers “desorientación ves-pertina” to Kathryn Lugo’s “Empeoraal atardecar” to describe this sort ofdisorientation and confusion thattakes place as evening comes on.

(E-Sp 3-02/2) (footage in film-making): Renato Calderón can livewith “secuencias filmadas,” but onemight also use “metraje filmado…varias horas de metraje filmado deanuncios y toda una serie demejoras….” Ana Casterán-Winkler

Address your queries and responses to The Translation Inquirer, 112 Ardmoor Avenue, Danville, Pennsylvania17821, or fax them to (570) 275-1477. E-mail address: [email protected]. Please make your submissions by the25th of each month to be included in the next issue. Generous assistance from Per Dohler, proofreader, is gratefullyacknowledged.

The Translation Inquirer By John Decker


calls it “filmación,” plain and simple.“…varias horas de [] filmación.”According to Aida Torres of SanJuan, Puerto Ricans use “pietajecomercial,” whether relating to filmsor feet, as a measure of the extent ofa piece of real estate.

(E-Sp 4-02/7) (chapter, as in sub-division of an organization): Theword “capítulo” is used and under-stood by native Spanish speakers forthis meaning of chapter, opinesLezlie Parra. If you can’t bring your-self to use this word, he would sug-gest “división.”

(E-Sp 4-02/8) (outreach): EstelaHerrera feels that “extensión” is agood Spanish equivalent. Dependingon the context, it is also possible touse “llegar” or “tener llegada.”“Programas en beneficio a la comu-nidad” conveys the proper meaningfor this, in the opinion of Lezlie Perra.

(F-E 4-02/10) (“mèlanges enl’état”): Chester Claff believes thefinal three words, which literallymean in the condition, should betranslated as as. The entire phrase,found on page 57 of the April 2002ATA Chronicle, in English is: Blendsas formulated, manufactured, andsold by industrial converters.

(G-E 3-02/4) (“Lieferumfang”):Henrik Schlieker says that commonlyused terms in the industry for thisword are scope of deliverables, orsimply deliverables.

(G-E 3-02/6) (“Entarretierhebel”):This, according to Sigrid Junkermann,after she waded through what shecalled “terrible German,” is a releaselever. And we ought to know that thehyphenation on “Saugrad” is wrong.It’s “Saug-rad,” not “Sau-grad.”

(I-E 4-02/11) (“l’assetto soci-etario”): Berto Berti calls this thecompany structure, meaning how the

company, corporation, partnership, orwhatever, is organized.

(R-E 9-01/8) (Cyfxfkf gbk cevjv> f gjnjv jlby): Marc Colucci’sapproach to this aphorism was toconsult a small group of nativeRussian speakers. One of thempaused to consider, then laughedaloud and explained it this way: whenthe fellow who was the subject of theaphorism began boozing, there weretwo “persons” present, so to speak—he and his mind. As he continued,one of the two—his mind—eventu-ally left. In other words, he drank somuch, he lost his mind.

Tatyana Allgire notes that this is alexical variation of ltkfnm xnj-kb,jc evjv, meaning to know how to dosomething right. In this case, the firstpart of it means that he could drinkwithout consequences. The secondpart, describing his drinking alone,contains a cultural component thatneeds to be explained. Drinking alonein Russian culture is the worst thingthat can happen to a habitual imbiber.He who does not need company toshare a bottle of vodka definitely hasan addiction, and will be despised byhis friends. Therefore, this briefaphorism describes the developmentof one man’s character, not just oneparticular imbibing event. She wouldrender the phrase altogether as: Firsthe was a social drinker, then becamean alcoholic.

(R-E 4-02/12) (Jnws Pdtpljybq):No wonder Plesiosaurus was con-fused. The reference in this sentence(found in full on page 58 of the April2002 ATA Chronicle) is, according toTatyana Allgire, to Moscow 2042, anantiutopian novel by VladimirVoinovich. In it, the ideals of commu-nism are carried to the point ofabsurdity. Father Zvezdoniy, one of

the characters, has the military rank ofmajor general in religious service, andworks as part of a “spiritual nutritioncommittee.” His last priority, it mayeasily be guessed, is ensuringfreedom of conscience. Therefore, agood rendering of the heavily sar-castic Russian original phrase mightbe: It is just no use trying to makethese Fathers Zvezdoniy, newlybrought to light, understand whatfreedom of conscience is. A footnoteexplaining the literary referencewould complete the translation.

(Sp-E 10-01/7) (“subdiario decaja, de bancos, de cuenta corri-ente”): This, according to EstelaHerrera, is a subsidiary journal con-taining detailed information on trans-actions, which is then entered into thejournal as a total.

(Sp-E 3-02/8) (“termino de giro”):For Ximena Oliver, this refers to acompany that has ceased its business,that is, for tax purposes as reported tothe Impuestos Internos, the Chileanequivalent of the Internal RevenueService. In reality, she says, there isno equivalent there, since ImpuestosInternos is not even a shadow of whatthe U.S. has.

Anamaría Argandoña states thatthe “giro” mentioned herein hasnothing to do with any grace period.Rather, it is “giro comercial” (line ofbusiness), with “rubro” being anotherterm used in Chile for the same thing.

Renato Calderón goes with dead-line—that is, the deadline to complywith the Internal Revenue Service.

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If it babbles like a babybut is much too old for that,maybeit’s a bureaucrat!(Translation from ancient hieroglyphic graffiti)

Which brings us to Eurospeak,not the language spoken inEurope, but the language to be

used to speak, write, or translate any-thing having to do with the new cur-rency of the European EconomicUnion. As Ingrid Haussteiner tells us inthe January 2002 issue of this finejournal (“Euro Proficiency forTranslators”), a hundredth of a euro is acent, not a euro cent, though the coinsthemselves are stamped “Euro Cent.”No problem!! In the future the coins

will simply be over-stamped with theleading words “This is not a.” However,the fact that the plural of English “cent”is “cent” makes no “cents.”

And then there is the SI system ofunits (Le Système Internationald’Unités), another example ofbureaucratic babble sometimes expli-cated in the pages of this journal. Inthis fine system, as everyone knows,mm is a millimeter (oops, sorry, mil-limetre). Other (real) symbols are aAfor attoampere, kK for kilokelvin, nNfor nanonewton, Gg for gigagram, Ttfor teraton, and hha for hectohectare(wasn’t that the name of an Italiansong popular in the U.S. a couple ofdecades ago?). A PPa is a petapascal,not to be confused with a pPa, a

picopascal. (Most engineers regardthe pascal as a useless unit of pres-sure, bar none.) And SI is obviously asexist system. The big man, M =mega, is 1021 times bigger than thelittle lady, f = femto. Even the littleman, m = milli, is 1012 times biggerthan the little lady. Even the littlestman, µ = micro, is 109 times biggerthan the little lady. (I leave the sym-bolism of the littlest man’s appendagehanging limply down his left side forthe reader to figure out.)

I suggest the French Academy, orperhaps Big Brother, as properhavens for those who believe bureau-cratic determination of meaning to bea good idea.

Herman is a librettist and translator. Submit items for future columns via e-mail to [email protected] or viasnail mail to Mark Herman, 5748 W Brooks Rd., Shepherd, MI 48883-9202. Discussions of the translation of humorand examples thereof are preferred, but humorous anecdotes about translators, translations, and mistranslationsare also welcome. Include copyright information and permission if relevant.

Humor and Translation By Mark Herman

Bureaucratic Babble

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From the President Continued from page 7

more than a dozen general and spe-cialized dictionaries at once.Although the product currentlyfocuses on Swedish, it already con-tains the Collins French, Spanish, andGerman dictionaries. To be able tohave all of one’s dictionaries on asingle CD-ROM and search them allat once is obviously a dream cometrue for translators, particularly thosewho travel with their laptops. I have

written to Wordfinder to find outwhether they might be interested inexhibiting at our conference inNovember, and whether they haveplans to expand their offerings toinclude, for example, a CD-ROMwith a host of French dictionaries.

You can learn more about the SFÖon the web at www.sfoe.se.

The University of Arizona’s National Center for Interpretation Agnese Haury Institute forInterpretation

July 8–26, 2002

For Long-Term Planners

Future Annual Conference Sites and Dates

Phoenix, ArizonaNovember 5-8, 2003

Toronto, CanadaOctober 13-16, 2004

Seattle, WashingtonNovember 10-13, 2005

The Agnese Haury Institute for Interpretation, now inits 19th year at the University of Arizona, is the longestrunning intensive Spanish/English interpreter trainingprogram in the United States. The program offers anintensive three-week course dedicated to improvinglanguage and interpreting services in diverse areas.

Past Agnese Haury Institute participants have included:medical interpreters, lawyers, conference interpreters, lawenforcement officers, aspiring and practicing interpreters,business professionals, community interpreters, educators,many working state or federally certified court interpreters,and people looking for a new profession.

For more information about instructors, prices, andregistration, access our website at:http://nci.arizona.edu; Tel: (520) 621-3615; Fax: (520) 624-8130; E-mail: [email protected]

PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY

School of Extended StudiesContinuing Education PressCall Toll Free 866-647-7377

or 503-725-4891www.cep.pdx.edu


Plan now to attend ATA’s Annual Conference. Join your colleagues for a rewarding experience in Atlanta, Georgia.

ATA’s 43rd Annual Conference will feature:• Over 150 educational sessions offering something for everyone;• The Job Exchange where individuals promote their services and companies meet translators and interpreters;• Over 50 exhibits featuring the latest publications, software, and services available;• Opportunities to network with over 1,600 translators and interpreters from throughout the U.S. and around the world; and• Much more!

The Registration Form and Preliminary Program will be mailed in July to all ATA members. The conference rates are listed below.As always, ATA members receive significant discounts.

Conference Registration Fees ATA member Nonmember Student Member

Early-Bird (by October 1) $245 $335 $110 One-day $125 $170 n/a

After October 1 $305 $420 $130One-day $160 $220 n/a

On-site (after October 26) $380 $525 $150One-day $195 $270 n/a

Note: Students and one-day participants do not receive a copy of the Proceedings.All speakers must register for the conference.

Hotel Accommodations

The Hyatt Regency Hotel, the host hotel, is conveniently located in downtown Atlanta at 265 Peachtree Street, NE. Thehotel is 20 minutes from Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport.

Conference attendees can register at the discounted rate of $160 single, $165 double, $175 triple, and $185 quadruple plustax per night. (Regency Club accommodations are offered at an additional charge of $35 per room based on availability.) Thisrate is good until October 15, 2002. The availability of guest rooms or the group rate cannot be guaranteed after that date.

To make your hotel reservations, contact the Hyatt Regency at 1-866-333-8880 or 404-577-1234. Be sure to specify thatyou are attending the ATA Annual Conference.

Travel Arrangements

ATA once again offers the services of Stellar Access to help you with your travel arrangements. Through Stellar Accessconference attendees are eligible for discounted air travel and rental cars.

Call Stellar Access at 1-800-929-4242, and ask for ATA Group #505. Outside the U.S. and Canada, call 858-805-6109; fax:858-547-1711. A $30 ($35 from outside the U.S. and Canada) transaction fee will be applied to all tickets purchased by phone.Reservation hours: Monday-Friday 6:30am-5:00pm Pacific Time.

A $15 transaction fee will be applied to all tickets purchased online. Go to www.stellaraccess.com and book your reservations from the convenience of your home or office anytime! First-time users must register and refer to Group #505.

American Translators Association43rd Annual ConferenceHYATT REGENCY HOTEL • ATLANTA, GEORGIA

NOVEMBER 6 – NOVEMBER 9, 2002

Mark Your Calendar Today!November 6–9, 2002


ATA Accreditation Exam Information

Upcoming Exams

CaliforniaJuly 20, 2002GardenaRegistration Deadline:July 5, 2002

ColoradoSeptember 14, 2002BoulderRegistration Deadline:August 30, 2002

FloridaAugust 25, 2002MiamiRegistration Deadline:August 9, 2002

GeorgiaNovember 9, 2002AtlantaRegistration Deadline:October 25, 2002

MassachusettsAugust 11, 2002BostonRegistration Deadline:July 26, 2002

MichiganAugust 31, 2002NoviRegistration Deadline:August 16, 2002

MinnesotaSeptember 22, 2002MinneapolisRegistration Deadline:September 6, 2002

New YorkSeptember 14, 2002New York CityRegistration Deadline:August 30, 2002

TexasAugust 31, 2002HoustonRegistration Deadline:August 16, 2002

ArgentinaJuly 27, 2002Buenos AiresRegistration Deadline:July 12, 2002

ItalySeptember 20, 2002BolognaRegistration Deadline:September 6, 2002

The NetherlandsSeptember 28, 2002UtrechtRegistration Deadline:September 13, 2002

CongratulationsCongratulations to thefollowing people whohave successfully completed accreditation exams:

Danish into EnglishKyle D. VraaCircle Pines, MN

Finnish into EnglishBo DahlstromTiburon, CA

English into DutchBas van OosterhoutYogyakarta, Indonesia

English into JapaneseKazumi PestkaNew York, NY

English into RussianYurey Y. SkripnikovSt. Paul, MN

English into SpanishAndrea FriedmannChicago, IL

The Active MemberReview Committee ispleased to grant activeor corresponding member status to:

ActiveSara SchusterNew York City, NY

Linda Zhao-DavisonAnaheim, CA

CorrespondingAleksandar Petrovic Feltpost, Denmark

Massimo VangelistaVicenza, Italy

Please direct all inquiriesregarding general accredi-tation information to ATAHeadquarters at (703)683-6100. Registration forall accreditation examsshould be made throughATA Headquarters. All sit-tings have a maximumcapacity and admission isbased on the order inwhich registrations arereceived. Forms are avail-able from the ATA websiteor from Headquarters.

The Translator Interpreter Hall of Fame(TIHOF) is now accepting nominationsfor 2002. The TIHOF was foundedSeptember 30, 2000, to recognize theachievements of, and pay tribute to, themen and women who have helped pene-trate cultural and linguistic barriersbetween the world’s peoples. Languagespecialists the world over observeInternational Translators Day every yearon September 30, the Feast Day of St.Jerome, the patron saint of translators

and the TIHOF’s first honoree. Each yearon this date the TIHOF will honor addi-tional outstanding practitioners of theart of translating and interpreting.

Nominations for historical or contempo-rary figures should include a biographyand/or an essay on the nominee (700words or longer) with optional illustra-tions. Please send entries [email protected] by August 1, 2002.

Nominations will be judged by a paneldrawn from various translator and inter-preter associations. New honorees will beannounced on International TranslatorsDay, September 30, 2002, and publishedon the TIHOF website (www.tihof.org),with proper credit given to essay authorsand translators. Submissions will becomethe property of the TIHOF. Nominees notinducted at the 2002 ceremony may beconsidered for future years.

Translator Interpreter Hall of Fame Accepting 2002 Nominations


ATA ChaptersAtlanta Association of Interpreters and Translators (AAIT) P.O. Box 12172Atlanta, GA 30355Tel: (770) [email protected] • www.aait.org

Carolina Association of Translators and Interpreters (CATI)318 Bandock DriveDurham, NC 27703Tel: (919) 577-0840 • Fax: (775) 244-2746 [email protected] • www.catiweb.org• Local group meetings held in Asheville,

Charlotte, and Research Triangle Park,NC; Columbia and Greenville/Spartanburg, SC.

• Membership directory, $12; CATIQuarterly subscription, $12.

Florida Chapter of ATA (FLATA)P.O. Box 14-1057Coral Gables, FL 33114-1057Tel/Voice: (305) 274-3434 Fax: (305) [email protected] • www.atafl.com

Mid-America Chapter of ATA (MICATA)6600 NW Sweetbriar LaneKansas City, MO 64151Attn.: Meeri YuleTel: (816) 741-9441 • Fax: (816) [email protected] • www.ata-micata.org

National Capital Area Chapter of ATA (NCATA)P.O. Box 65200Washington, DC 20035-5200Tel: (202) 255-9290 • Fax (202) [email protected] • www.ncata.org• The Professional Services Directory of

the National Capital Area Chapter of theAmerican Translators Association(NCATA) has gone online. It lists NCATAmembers and the services they offer,together with additional informationthat enables translation and interpreta-tion users to find just the right lan-guage specialist for their projects.Bookmark www.ncata.org and checkout the NCATA directory. If you maintainlanguage-related webpages, you maywant to include a link to the directory.NCATA is always interested in comments and suggestions.

New York Circle of Translators (NYCT)P.O. Box 4051, Grand Central StationNew York, NY 10163-4051Tel: (212) [email protected] • www.nyctranslators.org

Northeast Ohio Translators Association (NOTA)1963 E Sprague RoadSeven Hills, OH 44131Tel: (440) 526-2365 • Fax: (440) [email protected]

Northern California TranslatorsAssociation (NCTA)P.O. Box 14015Berkeley, CA 94712-5015Tel: (510) 845-8712 • Fax: (510) [email protected] • www.ncta.org• Telephone/online referral service. See

searchable translator database on website.• NCTA Directory of Translators and

Interpreters available on CD-ROM ordiskette for $15. Accept MasterCard/Visa.

Northwest Translators and Interpreters Society (NOTIS)P.O. Box 25301Seattle, WA 98125-2201Tel: (206) [email protected] • www.notisnet.org

Southern California Area Translators andInterpreters Association (SCATIA)P.O. Box 34310Los Angeles, CA 90034Tel: (818) 725-3899 • Fax: (818) [email protected] • www.scatia.org

Affiliated GroupsMichigan Translators/Interpreters Network(MiTiN) P.O. Box 852 Novi, MI 48376 Tel: (248) 344-0909 • Fax: (248) 344-0092 [email protected]

Upper Midwest Translators andInterpreters Association (UMTIA)Coordinator, Minnesota Translation Laboratory218 Nolte Center315 Pillsbury Drive SEMinneapolis, MN 55455Tel: (612) 625-3096 • Fax: (612) [email protected]

Utah Translators and InterpretersAssociation (UTIA)3617 S 1400 WestSalt Lake City, UT 84119Tel: (801) 973-0912 • Fax: (208) [email protected] • www.utia.org

Other GroupsThis list gives contact information for translation and interpretation groups as aservice to ATA members. Inclusion doesnot imply affiliation with or endorsementby ATA.

American Literary Translators Association (ALTA)The University of Texas at DallasMC35, P.O. Box 830688Richardson, TX 75083-0688Tel: (972) 883-2093 • Fax: (972) [email protected]

Austin Area Translators and InterpretersAssociation (AATIA)P.O. Box 13331 Austin, TX 78711-3331Tel: (512) 707-3900 [email protected] • www.aatia.org

The California Court InterpretersAssociation (CCIA)345 S Hwy 101, Suite DEncinitas, CA 92024Tel: (760) 635-0273 • Fax: (760) [email protected] • www.ccia.org

Chicago Area Translators and InterpretersAssociation (CHICATA)P.O. Box 804595Chicago, IL 60680-4107Tel: (312) [email protected] • www.chicata.org

ATA Chapters, Affiliated Groups, and Other Groups


Colorado Translators Association (CTA)3054 S Xanthia StreetDenver, CO 80025Tel: (303) 743-7719 [email protected]• For more information about the online

directory, newsletter, accreditationexams, and professional seminars,please visit www.cta-web.org.

Delaware Valley Translators Association (DVTA)606 John Anthony DriveWest Chester, PA 19382-7191Tel: (215) [email protected]

El Paso Interpreters and TranslatorsAssociation (EPITA)1003 Alethea PlaceEl Paso, TX 79902 Tel: (915) 532-8566 • Fax: (915) [email protected]

Houston Interpreters and TranslatorsAssociation (HITA) P.O. Box 61285Houston, TX 77208-1285Tel: (713) 935-2123

The Kentucky Translators and InterpretersAssociation (KTIA)P.O. Box 7468 Louisville, KY 40257-0468Tel: (502) 548-3988E-mail: [email protected]

Metroplex Interpreters and TranslatorsAssociation (MITA) 712 Cornfield DriveArlington, TX 76017Tel: (817) 417-4747www.dfw-mita.com

National Association of JudiciaryInterpreters and Translators (NAJIT) 551 Fifth Avenue, Suite 3025New York, NY 10176Tel: (212) 692-9581 • Fax: (212) [email protected] • www.najit.org

New England Translators Association (NETA) 27 Wachusett AvenueArlington, MA 02476Tel: (781) 648-1731 • Fax: (617) [email protected] • www.netaweb.org

New Mexico Translators and InterpretersAssociation (NMTIA)P.O. Box 36263Albuquerque, NM 87176Tel: (505) 352-9258 • Fax: (505) [email protected]/~nmtia• Membership Directory available for $5.

Please make check payable to NMTIAand mail your request to the addresslisted here, or contact us by e-mail.

The Translators and Interpreters Guild (TTIG)962 Wayne Avenue, Suite 500Silver Spring, MD 20910Tel: (301) 563-6450 • (800) 992-0367Fax: (301) [email protected] • www.ttig.org

Washington State Court Interpreters andTranslators Society (WITS)P.O. Box 1012 Seattle, WA 98111-1012Tel: (206) 382-5690www.witsnet.org

International GroupsFITFédération Internationale desTraducteurs/International Federation ofTranslators (FIT)2021 Avenue Union, Bureau 1108 Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 2S9Tel: (514) 845-0413 • Fax: (514) [email protected]

AUSTRALIAAustralian Institute of Interpreters andTranslators, Inc. (AUSIT)P.O. Box A202Sydney South, NSW 1235 AustraliaTel/Fax: +61 (02) 9626 7046 [email protected] • www.ausit.org

CANADAAssociation of Translators andInterpreters of Alberta (ATIA)P.O. Box 2635Station MCalgary, Alberta, T2P 3C1 Canada Tel: (403) 243-3477(Alberta office) or(780) 434-8384 (Edmonton office)www.atia.ab.ca

Association of Translators andInterpreters of Ontario (ATIO)1 Nicholas Street, Suite 1202Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1N 7B7Tel: (613) 241-2846, Toll-free: 1-800-234-5030Fax: (613) [email protected] • www.atio.on.ca

Ordre des Traducteurs, Terminologues etInterprètes Agréés du Québec (OTTIAQ)2021 Union, Suite 1108Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 2S9 Tel: (514) 845-4411Toll-free: (800) 265-4815 Fax: (514) [email protected] • www.ottiaq.org

Society of Translators and Interpreters ofBritish Columbia (STIBC)Suite 514, 850 W Hastings Street, Box 34Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6C 1E1Tel: (604) 684-2940 • Fax: (604) [email protected] • www.stibc.org

ENGLANDInstitute of Translation & Interpreting (ITI)Exchange House494 Midsummer BoulevardCentral Milton KeynesMK9 2EA EnglandTel: +44 (0) 1908 255905Fax: +44 (0) 1908 [email protected] • www.iti.org.uk

Note: All announcements must be receivedby the first of the month prior to the monthof publication (For example, September 1for October issue). For more informationon chapters or to start a chapter, pleasecontact ATA Headquarters. Send updatesto Mary David, ATA Chronicle, 225Reinekers Lane, Suite 590, Alexandria, VA22314; Tel: (703) 683-6100; Fax: (703) 683-6122; [email protected].


MARKETPLACE

Highly experienced, reliable, fast translator / con-ference interpreter. Any work volume. Qualitycontrol. (303) 530-9781; Fax: (303) 530-5600,[email protected].

Top quality and high volume translation services.DTP and Lino output. PC and Mac. We supportmost Vietnamese fonts. Call us today at (954)570-9061; Fax: (954)570-9108.

Czech, Slovak <> English

English <> Vietnamese

Michael Borek, translator/conference interpreter,technical/business background, US StateDepartment contractor. Voice: (202) 338-7483;Fax: (202) 338-7901; E-mail: [email protected]

Czech <> English

Translation & Interpretation: Legal, financial,biz, and technical. Volume welcome. quickresponse, high-quality, competitive rates. Voice(925)228-5500; fax (925)313-9100; [email protected]

Korean<>English<>Japanese

Call today today to advertise in ATA’s Marketplace!

1-800-394-5157 ext. 38

Don’t let another issue pass you by!

ProZ.com Web workplaceVoted the “best source of translation jobs on the

Internet”, ProZ.com is actually much more. Over25,000 member agencies and freelancers also use theKudoZ™ collaboration network and other unique tools.

Registration is free, platinum membership is just$120/yr. There are no commissions on jobs, and ATAcredentials are honored. Join now!

http://www.ProZ.com

By translators. For translators.

Web Recruitment

Full-time independent translator/conferenceinterpreter. PC/Macintosh. Dr. Piotr Graff. 802-258-4667. [email protected]/~graff

Polish<>English

Highly Experienced. Medical, pharmaceutical,chemical, technical. Voice: (610)581-7150Fax: (610)581-7151 E-mail: [email protected]

Hungarian > English

International Communication Specialist/Translator: translate, develop, edit and standard-ize a variety of web pages, documents, and pro-grams for online dissemination in English,Chinese and Japanese. Coordinate marketingprograms and communication tactics for newproduct and center launches for the Asian mar-kets. Implement customer surveys as well as ana-lyze and interpret raw data into logical strategies.Conduct website content analysis. Coordinatecustomer support quality management program.Minimum requirements: Master’s degree inEnglish, Communications or related field and 3years of experience in the job offered or 3 years ofexperience in Communications or Translationfiled. 40 hours per week. Salary commensuratewith experience. Please forward resume to GloriaLiu, International Department, IntercosmosMedia Group, Inc., 650 Poydras Street, Suite2311, New Orleans, LA 70130. EOE.

Recruitment

TECHNICAL LINGUISTS needed. Details atwww.FileTax.com Send resume to CompleteBusiness Services, 1734 Divisadero Street, SF 94115

Technical Linguist

For Sale

Translation & Interpretation Agency

Contact Brian Mazar, Sunbelt Business Brokers at:502-244-0480 email: [email protected]

• Established 1991 • Current Sales $500,000 and growing• Business nets owner approx. $125,000 per year

• Offering price: $261,000 • Seller financing of 50% of selling price

Highly experienced, accurate translator in multi-ple subjects seeks freelance work. Voice: (717)432-7010; Fax: (717)432-9478; E-mail: [email protected]

French > English

Job Opportunity

Announcing

The Business of Translating & Interpreting SeminarWyndham Boston Hotel

Boston, Massachusetts • Saturday, August 10, 2002

Join your colleagues in Boston on August 10th for a full day of in-depth sessions on the business end oftranslating and interpreting. All sessions will be in English and will be submitted for ContinuingEducation Credit for the States of California and Washington. A continental breakfast will be served.

Available Sessions

Contracts and the Freelance Translator & InterpreterCourtney Searls-Ridge

The Translation Company UnveiledLeah Ruggiero

Market Segments and How to Pursue ThemBeatriz Bonnet

Do's and Don'ts of Finding and Keeping Your Customers as a Freelance InterpreterTodd Burrell

Running Your T/I Business Out of Your HomeEta Trabing

Abstracts and speaker biographies can be found at www.atanet.org/business/abstracts.htm.

Early-Bird Registration Fees: ATA Members $165 Nonmembers $255

After August 2 and On-site: ATA Members $235 Nonmembers $330

Space is limited. For more information, contact ATA Headquarters at 703-683-6100 or visit the ATAwebsite at www.atanet.org and click on the Business Seminar link on the home page. (Direct link iswww.atanet.org/business.)

A small block of rooms has been reserved at $169 single/double a night (plus tax) at the WyndhamBoston Hotel located at 89 Broad Street, Boston, MA 02110. To reserve your hotel room, contact theWyndham at (617) 556-0006. Be sure to mention that you are attending The ATA Business ofTranslating and Interpreting Seminar.

Complete the Registration Form on page 58 to register today!

~ An ATA Professional Development Seminar ~

The Business of Translating & Interpreting SeminarWyndham Boston Hotel • Boston, Massachusetts • August 10, 2002

REGISTRATION FORM

Name: ATA Member Number:First Name Middle Initial Last Name

Employer/School:(Only list employer or school if you want it to appear on your badge.)

Address:Street

City State/Province Zip/Postal Code Country

Telephone - Primary: Secondary:

Fax Number: E-mail Address:

SEMINAR REGISTRATION FEES: ATA Member Nonmember*

Early-Bird (before August 2) $165 $255 $__________

On-site (after August 2) $235 $330 $__________

*Individuals who join ATA when registering for this seminar qualify for the ATA member registration fee. Please contact ATA or visit the ATA website for a membership application.

TOTAL PAYMENT: $__________

Cancellations received in writing by August 2, 2002, are eligible for a refund. Refunds will not be honored after August 2.A $25 administrative fee will be applied to all refunds.

_ Check/Money Order: Please make payable, through a U.S. bank in U.S. funds, to American Translators Association.

_ Credit Card: Charge my _ American Express _ VISA _ MasterCard _ Discover

Card No. __/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/ Expiration Date:________________

Name on Card: Signature:

Please send payment and completed form to: American Translators Association, 225 Reinekers Lane, Suite 590, Alexandria,VA 22314. OR, if paying by credit card, please fax completed form to: (703) 683-6122.

_____Please check here if you require special accessibility or assistance. (Attach a sheet with your requirements.)

For more information about The Business of T&I Seminar or ATA membership,please visit the ATA website at www.atanet.org or contact ATA at (703) 683-6100 or [email protected].

~An ATA Professional Development Seminar~

An accreditation exam sitting will be held on Sunday, August 11. This will be a standard exam, not business-specific. To register, please visit the ATA website to obtain the Accreditation Examination Registration Form.

American Translators AssociationOfficersPresidentMr. Thomas L. West IIIIntermark Language Services Corp.2555 Cumberland Pkwy, Ste. 295Atlanta, GA 30339Tel: (770) 444-3055Fax: (770) [email protected]

President-electMr. Scott Brennan10005 Cairn Mountain WayBristow, VA 20136-3009Tel: (703) 393-0365Fax: (703) [email protected]

SecretaryMs. Courtney Searls-RidgeGerman Language Services2658 48th Avenue SWSeattle, WA 98116Tel: (206) 938-3600Fax: (206) [email protected]

TreasurerDr. Jiri Stejskal7312 Oak AvenueMelrose Park, PA 19027Tel: (215) 635-7090Fax: (215) [email protected]

Directors Committee Chairs Division AdministratorsMr. Kirk Anderson2455 Flamingo Drive, #401Miami Beach, FL 33140Tel: (305) 532-7252Fax: (305) [email protected]

Ms. Beatriz Bonnet7465 E Peakview AvenueEnglewood, CO 80111Tel: (303) 779-1288Fax: (303) [email protected]

Mr. Robert A. Croese204 Neely Crossing LaneSimpsonville, SC 29680Tel: (864) 967-3955Fax: (864) [email protected]

Ms. Marian S. Greenfield2619 Holly AvenueSouth Plainfield, NJ 07080Tel: (908) 561-7590Fax: (908) [email protected]

Prof. Alan K. Melby1223 Aspen AvenueProvo, UT 84604Tel: (801) 378-2144Fax: (801) [email protected]

Mr. Robert E. Sette109 Biddle AvenuePittsburgh, PA 15221Tel: (412) 731-8198Fax: (412) [email protected]

Ms. Ines Swaney6161 Harwood AvenueOakland, CA 94618Tel: (510) 658-7744Fax: (510) [email protected]

Prof. Madeleine C. Velguth2608 E Newport AvenueMilwaukee, WI 53211Tel: (414) 229-5968Fax: (414) [email protected]

Mr. Timothy Yuan89-33 Pontiac StreetQueens Village, NY 11427Tel: (718) 776-8139Fax: (718) [email protected]

AccreditationLilian Novas Van VrankenSpring, TXTel: (281) [email protected]

Active Membership ReviewLeland D. WrightKent, OHTel: (330) 673-0043Fax: (330) [email protected]

BudgetJiri StejskalMelrose Park, PA Tel: (215) 635-7090Fax: (215) [email protected]

ChaptersRobert A. CroeseSimpsonville, SC Tel: (864) 967-3955Fax: (864) [email protected]

Dictionary ReviewBoris M. SilversteynVenice, FLTel/Fax: (941) [email protected]

DivisionsDorothee RacetteSaranac, NYTel: (518) 293-7494Fax: (518) [email protected]

Education and Training(Non-ATA Programs)Gertrud Graubart ChampeSurry, METel: (207) [email protected]

EthicsVacant

Honors and AwardsJo Anne EngelbertSt. Augustine, FLTel: (904) 460-1190Fax: (904) [email protected]

Interpretation PolicyAdvisoryChristian DegueldreSan Diego, CATel: (619) [email protected]

Mentoring Task ForceCourtney Searls-RidgeSeattle, WATel: (206) 938-3600Fax: (206) [email protected]

Professional Development(ATA Programs)Marian S. GreenfieldSouth Plainfield, NJTel: (908) 561-7590Fax: (908) [email protected]

Public RelationsChris DurbanParis, FranceTel: 33(1)42935802Fax: 33(1)[email protected]

Kevin S. HendzelArlington, VATel: (703) 516-9266Fax: (703) [email protected]

Special ProjectsAnn MacfarlaneSeattle, WATel: (206) 542-8422Fax: (206) [email protected]

TerminologySue Ellen WrightKent, OHTel: (330) 673-0043Fax: (330) [email protected]

Translation and ComputersAlan K. MelbyProvo, UTTel: (801) 378-2144Fax: (801) [email protected]

Chinese LanguageFrank MouPittsburgh, PATel: (412) 767-4788Fax: (412) [email protected]

French LanguageMonique-Paule TubbChevy Chase, MDTel: (301) 654-2890Fax: (301) [email protected]

German LanguageDorothee RacetteSaranac, NYTel: (518) 293-7494Fax: (518) [email protected]

InterpretersHelen D. ColeSilver Spring, MDTel: (301) 572-2855Fax: (301) [email protected]

Italian LanguageMarcello J. NapolitanoMilpitas, CATel: (408) 422-7008Fax: (425) [email protected]

Japanese LanguageIzumi SuzukiNovi, MITel: (248) 344-0909Fax: (248) [email protected]

LiteraryClifford E. LandersNaples, FLTel: (941) [email protected]

NordicEdith M. MattesonBallwin, MOTel/Fax: (636) [email protected]

Portuguese LanguageTereza d’Ávila BragaDallas, TXTel: (972) 690-7730Fax: (972) [email protected]

Slavic LanguagesNora Seligman FavorovOrlando, FLTel: (407) 679-8151Fax: (646) [email protected]

Spanish LanguageRudolf HellerBrookfield, MATel: (508) 867-8494Fax: (508) [email protected]

Translation CompanySteven P. IversonMilwaukee, WITel: (414) 271-1144Fax: (414) [email protected]

To International Federation ofTranslators (FIT)Peter W. KrawutschkeKalamazoo, MITel: (616) 387-3212Fax: (616) [email protected]: www.fit-ift.org

To Joint National Committee for Languages (JNCL)Christophe RéthoréHarrisonburg, VATel: (540) 568-3512Fax: (540) [email protected]

To ASTM Translation UserStandards ProjectBeatriz A. BonnetEnglewood, COTel: (303) 779-1288Fax: (303) [email protected]

ATA Representatives

Documents

June 2002 Volume XXXI Number 6 The Chronicle › wp-content › uploads › 2002... · 2016-04-09 · translator, project man-ager, and business devel-opment manager. He presently