Volume 6, No. 2 
April 2002

 
  Mailman



 
 
 

 


 

 

Second Reader Survey

 
Index 1997-2002

 
  Translator Profiles
Reading Orwell
by Verónica Albín

 
  The Profession
The Bottom Line
by Fire Ant & Worker Bee
Heading for Trouble
by Danilo Nogueira
 
 
Translator Education
Teaching Proposal Writing to Translators
by Dr. Tibor Koltay  
Developing Guidelines for a New Curriculum for the English Translation BA Program in Iranian Universities
by Leila Razmjou

 
  Machine Translation
Useful Machine Translations of Japanese Patents Have Become a Reality
by Steve Vlasta Vitek

 
  Interpretation
The Role of Communication in Peace and Relief Mission Negotiations
by Victoria Edwards

 
  Legal Translation
Alcune riflessioni sulle problematiche traduttive dei termini politico-istituzionali nella Costituzione italiana e spagnola
by Patrizia Brugnoli

 
  Book Reviews
Hyperformality, Politeness Markers and Vulgarity
by Zsuzsanna Ardó

 
  Translators Around the World
Un estudio del mercado español de la traducción en la internet
by Cristina Navas and Rocío Palomares, Ph.D.

 
  Arabic
Allegory in Arabic Expressions of Speech and Silence
by Hasan Ghazala, Ph.D.

 
  Science & Technology
A Translator’s Guide to Organic Chemical Nomenclature XXVII
by Chester E. Claff, Jr., Ph.D.

 
  Caught in the Web
Web Surfing for Fun and Profit
by Cathy Flick, Ph.D.
Translators’ On-Line Resources
by Gabe Bokor

 
  Translators’ Tools
Translators’ Emporium

 
Translators’ Job Market

 
Letters to the Editor

 
Translators’ Events

 
Call for Papers and Editorial Policies
Translation Journal
 
Letters


Letters to the Editor


I'm a freelance English-Korean translator who enjoys your Journal's excellent articles.

I agree with Andrei Gerasimov (Marketing Your Translation Services) 100% as I had exactly the same experiences with agencies. It is a great pity they don't play the game more honestly. Seasoned translators fully understand that translation jobs are not readily available at all times. Therefore, agencies should better tell us from the beginning that test translations are for screening translators for their future projects.

I applaud Andrei for his excellent description of the market situation.

Young-ha Kwon, Seoul, Korea
 

I have just discovered that your e-zine exists and was pleasantly surprised at the standard. The article on CAT software in the latest number was particularly interesting as I am in the throes of trying to familiarise myself with Transit PE // SDLX // Wordfast and am also playing with a tool called Glossy, which is intended to make all the odd glossary files I have scattered all over both hard discs available for every translation.
...
I find the comments on gender bias [in a Letter to the Editor] just plain daft, frankly. Where the male gender is used it was always understood to mean both, unless otherwise obvious from the context or specifically stated. Since the female gender is not excluded in the case mentioned by María Garcia, I fail to understand the difficulty. Political Correctness has inflicted silly words like "spokesperson" on us, which make life impossible for anyone translating into any language using gender-based grammar.

Where the events of September the eleventh are concerned [see comments in another Letter to the Editor], there seems to be a fashion of assuming that the fault lies with US foreign policy or poverty. The first is fallacious because the perpetrators' intent is to forcibly Islamicise as much of the world as they can and only use e.g. the stationing of US troops including women in the Gulf as an excuse, and the second because none of the leading personalities is poverty-stricken. On the contrary - they are virtually without exception wealthy by any standards. Bin Laden himself is the spoilt brat of a billionaire. These knee-jerk explanations don't hold water. More and better thinking is needed.

On a completely new and different subject, I'd be interested in hearing how freelancers fund their social security / essential insurance. In Germany, I have to pay my pension contributions without entitlement to tax deductions as my wife works and we are permitted to deduct an amount from tax for pension provision that doesn't even cover the obligatory contributions a single employee on an average German salary has to make.

Dave Jacques, Bremen, Germany



Je vais commencer par me présenter: je suis étudiante en DEA [Diplôme d'études approfondies] « Discours et Représentations », option Linguistique, à l'Université de Poitiers, France, en bénéficiant d'une bourse de 3ème cycle de cette université. Le sujet de mon mémoire de DEA porte sur une étude contrastive des temps du passé — prétérit anglais, passé simple / passé composé français et leurs équivalents roumains — et les problèmes de traduction qu'ils impliquent.

Lors de ma documentation pour ce dossier, j'ai lu votre article publié dans Translation Journal (volume 6, no 1, janvier 2002) sur Translation and Culture. Je l'ai trouvé extrêmement intéressant et vous m'avez aidé à mieux m'orienter pour la problématique que je me propose d'aborder dans mon travail. Vous m'avez fait penser à plusieurs pistes qui méritent bien d'être exploitées, mais malheureusement les limites de mon dossier vont m'obliger à renoncer à beaucoup de détails. La complexité du problème m'oblige donc à bine délimiter le champ de mes observations. Je pense que vous comprenez ma position assez délicate car j'appartiens à une culture et à une langue vues comme « minoritaires », to say the least.

Je me suis proposé d'aborder des questions liées à « l'uniformisation » et surtout au danger de passer sous silence les particularités culturelles, ou de gommer les différences entre les cultures, pour assimiler « the otherness » de l'autre langue située dans un rapport d'infériorité.

J'ai pensé faire appel à vous pour éventuellement échanger quelques opinions là-dessus et pour vous demander quelques conseils.

Consuela Orzan, Poitiers, France