I have posted a couple of entries (presentation of the program and new version; all in Spanish) on my other blog about LF Aligner, an open-source freeware that allows you to automatically align documents. Highly recommendable!

aligner 3.0

Because children in Nepal have been left alone long enough and they deserve and want a proper education, Bluebird Translations continues supporting Amsterdam-based NGO Namasté and its wonderful projects aimed to help those dipreved children in Pokhara.

 

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Last October, at the METM11 conference in Barcelona, I was lucky enough to meet Isabel Hurtado de Mendoza in person. She is an experienced and resourceful translator based in Spain and the UK whom I got to know through her interesting and insightful articles in the ITI Bulletin. Since then we’ve been in touch, and being that we both took a positive impression from the meeting, we arranged this featuring entry with her review, which is a summary of the article published in the January-February issue of the ITI Bulletin.

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Back in May 2011, an ITI colleague recommended the Mediterranean Editors and Translators (MET) association to me. MET is a forum for translators and editors who work mainly into or with English and believe in peer-generated continuing professional development. In my opinion, CPD is vital in our profession, so I soon became a member of MET and registered for their annual meeting (METM).

METM11 took place at the European Institute of the Mediterranean in Barcelona (Spain) on 21st and 22nd October 2011, with 1.5 days of pre-meeting workshops before. This 7th meeting of MET bore the title “Quality in English translation and editing — from research to practice and back” and offered a rich programme of keynote speeches, discussion panels and parallel sessions.

On Thursday 20th, there were four afternoon workshops on offer, which dealt with translating research articles, medical translation, financial translation and improving text flow respectively. On Friday morning, five workshops run in parallel; two were related to medicine, one to scholarly writing and another one to readability. I opted for one entitled “Translation revision: why, how and how much”, conducted by Ailish Maher and Luci Vázquez. In this session, the figure of the reviser was defined and practical tips for revision and self-revision were discussed. With its hands-on exercises, this was a very informative and in-depth workshop.

The MET meeting itself started on Friday afternoon with a panel discussion on “Establishing a dialogue between research and practice”, with Iain Patten, Theresa Lillis, Valerie Matarese and Mary Ellen Kerans. After coffee, there were parallel presentations divided into two threads – promising practices and research –, which was meant to give the audience the chance to attend diverse sessions. Out of these, the highlight was Oliver Shaw’s on “Twitter for language professionals”, which was a huge success, not only for the topicality of the subject but also for the superb presentation skills demonstrated. The programme for the day ended with a plenary talk on machine translation (MT). Dorothy Kenny confidently presented this controversial topic, presenting us with challenging questions, giving us practical advice and even managing to convince part of the audience to give MT a try. The reception that topped off the first day of the meeting gave attendees plenty of opportunities to network and enjoy an exquisite and innovative catering service.

On Saturday morning, I chose a panel discussion in which three presenters (Anne Murray, Ann King and Jason Willis-Lee) described tools that save you time and make your working environment easier. Among the tools showcased were desktop-haring software, storage services, PDF annotators, fences, mind-mapping software and smartphones. After that, I attended a presentation by Helen Casas, which dealt with peer revision and mentoring and presented the benefits of cooperation over competition. “Translating audio guides for art exhibitions”, ably presented by Joanna Martinez, was a very practical and interesting talk on the whole audio guide production process. Ros Schwartz was in charge of Saturday’s plenary talk “Making silk purses”, where she presented the translator as a writer, who needs both ability and attitude to prepare a text that is fit for purpose and meets the client’s unarticulated requirements. In her view, we must ditch the humble-servant approach to our work, take the reins and submit translations of superior quality. This will give us job satisfaction and a good reason to increase our rates. After lunch, I attended a panel discussion on CAT tools, with David Cullen, Kelly Dickeson, Sarah Griffin-Mason and Rob Lunn.

This year’s METM also included the so-called "town hall meetings” on a variety of subjects, from presentation skills to literature in translation; “off-METM networking get-togethers”; the MET General Assembly; and a closing supper. This packed programme of events seemed to cater for all tastes; the speakers were fabulous; and it was a great opportunity to meet old and new colleagues.

If you would like any further information, my full report of this event has been published in the January-February issue of the ITI Bulletin, and you can check the association’s website (www.metmeetings.org) for further details. I’m sure you’ll want to become a member too!

Bluebird whishes Merry Christmas to its friends and clients with these tasty Belgian pralines... Feliz Navidad!

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Bluebird Translations has participated in the campaign run by the Dutch red cross to help Japan after the terrible earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit its coast. As well as Spain, the Netherlands has been one of the European countries that has supported Japan most urgently and most efficiently since this natural disaster ocurred.

Being that I am on a daily communication with Japan, this grim news was a devastating emotional shock for me. I wish Japan, this country whose history and culture has always fascinated me, the best for the difficult months ahead.

IWS 

Tras las últimas reacciones que he tenido por el comentario de mi último post, vuelvo a remitirme al cocido y morteruelo de Antonio con respecto a nuestro adorado IntelliWebSearch.

Recuerdo que es un freeware creado por un traductor que se le encendió la bombilla ya harto de tanto control-c y tanto control-v mientras abría las diferentes páginas de su navegador para documentarse (que si WR, AITE, buscador de acrónimos, Wikipedia, RAE..., que si elige idiomas, que si ahora la especialización).

IntelliWebSearch soluciona este largo proceso en una simple combinación de teclas personalizada.

La manera que yo tengo de utilizarlo es la siguiente (en realidad hay muchos más modos de realizar búsquedas; para los que queráis obtener información más detallada, os animo a realizar los webinars que seguro que suponen una útil inversión, aunque con este método a mí por ahora me vale):

Una vez instalado y con el icono de su "i" en la zona inferior derecha, empezamos a configurar las páginas web que queramos.Hacemos clic con el botón derecho "Wizard" y tras hacer clic en el primer "Aceptar", seleccionamos la dirección URL de la página (por ej. http://www.wordreference.com/enesl/ para el WR de términos legales) y ponemos un ejemplo de palabra simple que estamos seguros de que se va a encontrar (por ej. "act") y otro de una compuesta (por ej. "power of attorney"). Se nos abre la página en cuestión en el ordenador y seguimos las instrucciones: ponemos el cursor en la casilla del buscador (damos a aceptar) y entonces, se nos pide que cambiemos los parámetros de búsqueda (en este caso asegurarnos de que la pestaña están en "English - Spanish WR Legal") y que pulsemos el botón de búsqueda de la página y "Aceptar" en el Wizard o asistente.Comprobamos si los resultados son los esperados y se lo confirmamos al programa.Entonces nos aparecerá la pantalla última (Step 7/7) en la que yo pongo un Key Label (o referencia), una descripción personal (en este caso, por ej. "WordReference Legal ENG-SPA") y añado una combinación de teclas (shortcut key). Yo me he decido por poner todas mis combinaciones personales con Alt+Shift+una tecla. Estos son algunos ejemplos de mis combinaciones:
Alt + Shift + P Proz
Alt + Shift + G Google
Alt + Shift + I Google Images
Alt + Shift + R DRAE
Alt + Shift + E IATE
Alt + Shift + F IATE inversa
Alt + Shift + S Sinónimos
Alt + Shift + D Google define
Alt + Shift + T Google translation
Alt + Shift + A Acrónimos
Alt + Shift + Z DUDAS Rae
Alt + Shift + W WordReference
Alt + Shift + J WordReference Jurídico Legal
Alt + Shift + C WordReference Comercial Económico
Alt + Shift + L Linguee
Alt + Shift + X Wikipedia
Alt + Shift + O Pons ALE-ESP

Por último, "Save and close".

Y nada, a partir de ahí, ya estéis trabajando con Trados, OmegaT, Word o desde cualquier otro lugar en el que se pueda seleccionar texto, hacéis lo propio con la palabra que queréis buscar, pulsáis la combinación de teclas y voilà.

Una vez que veáis el tiempo de trabajo que Mr Farrell os está regalando, os invito a que penséis registraros (para lo cual se realiza una donación), porque me da que va a ser complicado coincidir con él con un buen potaje sobre la mesa.

 

(Entrada originalmente publicada en el Calco)

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