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Friday, October 27, 2006

Word tip: Spell Checking From the Keyboard

Source:http://wordtips.vitalnews.com/PrintPages/T0838P.html
Spell Checking From the Keyboard

You may already know that you can right-click on a
misspelled word and the resulting Context menu will
display suggested corrections for your error. You may
not want to use the mouse to activate this feature,
however. You might not want to take your hands off the
keyboard, which can slow down your editing. If you are
of this ilk, there are two major ways you can display
the Context menu for the misspelled word. In both
instances, you must make sure the insertion point is
somewhere in the misspelled word, then you can do
either of the following:

If you have one of the 104-key Windows keyboards,
press the "right-click key." This is the key next to
the right CTRL key.
Press SHIFT+F10.
Either of these methods will result in the Context
menu being displayed. You can then use the arrow keys
to select a suggested spelling correction. Pressing
Enter then makes the correction. If you don't see a
suggestion you like, pressing the ESC key dismisses
the Context menu.

Another possible solution is to simply place the
insertion point someplace before the misspelled word,
and then press ALT+F7. This automatically selects the
next misspelled word in the document and displays the
Context menu with suggested alternatives

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Thursday, October 26, 2006

5 important but little known Secrets of how to identify a fraud agency before accepting jobs

5 Simple rules
1. Email id of the agency is something like yahoo,
msn, gmail.com etc. Think twice, if the agency could
not afford to get its own domain name, it may not be
able to pay you also.
2. Sends a mail without any salutations(Dear Mr. etc)
and the mail contains no introduction etc.
3. The agency does not provide its full contact
details.
4. Wants 20000 words in 3 days!! Is he a translator
who does not know no human translator can provide
quality translation of 20000 words in 3 days. The
figures could be any. I just gave some example.
5.SO some intelligence gathering- google for the name
abd also search in payment practice yahoo group
messages.
If you do them , you will never repent. Happy reading.

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Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Demand grows for interpreters

Demand grows for interpreters
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 10/23/06
BY BILL WOLFE
GANNETT NEWS SERVICE
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061023/BUSINESS/610230406/1003

While working on her Spanish minor at Centre College
in Danville, Ky., in 1997, Terena Bell wanted to study
abroad. The closest she could get to a
Spanish-speaking country under the school's
study-abroad program at the time was Strasbourg,
France.

Bell "fell in love with the language" there and
changed her minor to French.

Nine years later — after following a path that
included jobs at three television stations, additional
travel to France, two-and-a-half years in sales at
Mall St. Matthews and a crash-course master's degree
in French at the University of Louisville — Bell has
transformed her passion for things French into a
career as owner of In Every Language, a year-old
translating and interpreting company.

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"Nothing in my life has ever been the straight path.
I've always kind of taken the roundabout way to get
anywhere," said Bell, 29.

But Bell believes she has found a field ripe for
expansion — and officials involved with immigration
and international business agree. The need for people
skilled in the use of foreign languages, they say, is
only going to grow.

"This morning I fielded a call from someone who was
looking for a Hindi interpreter," said Omar Ayyash,
director of Louisville, Ky.'s Office for International
Affairs. "Yesterday it might have been Spanish. The
day before it might have been Arabic.

"There are more businesses that are doing business all
over the world," Ayyash said. "As the world becomes
more flat, the need to understand and speak other
languages becomes crucial, becomes a must."

The international affairs office refers calls for
language assistance to services like Bell's or to
individual interpreters and translators listed in a
"community language bank."

"There are all kinds of translation issues that
companies need help with," said Susan Cook, senior
trade specialist with the Kentucky World Trade
Center's Louisville, Ky., office. Cook said she speaks
French and is able to provide some help directly.
Another trade specialist can assist with Mandarin
Chinese.

So who needs translating and interpreting services?

"It's everybody," Bell said, from farmers working with
Mexican laborers to teachers who need help
communicating with an immigrant student's parents or
companies that must translate their product manuals
for international markets. "It's phenomenal just how
large the increase in the need for these kinds of
services is. It just blows me away."

Bell is In Every Language's only full-time employee,
but she works with hundreds of contract interpreters
and translators representing 60 languages in 53
countries.

Fees for translators and interpreters vary widely.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the median
hourly pay for salaried workers was $16.28 in May
2004. The highest 10 percent earned more than $27.45
per hour.

Business clients sometimes balk at paying professional
providers. But people who aren't experienced in
translation and interpretation might not know slang
and informal expressions from another language, she
said.

"It is a profession," Ayyash said. "I am fluent in
Arabic, as well as proficient in German and in
English, but I've never been professionally trained as
an interpreter and I've been put in a couple of
situations — particularly in legal situations — where
I had to do interpreting, and quickly realized I was
not qualified for it.

"Just because you have a bilingual employee in your
department or your organization or your business, that
does not necessarily qualify them to conduct business
in that language," he said.

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Monday, October 23, 2006

Translator what is your hook?

Among all the other things the most important hook is
to respond to clients email as early as possible. The
earlier you respond your chance of getting the job
increases manyfold. Many translators do not pay
attention to this. So remain connected to net and
respond as soon as the request comes. Ideally you
should reply to clients mail by yesterday. If that
seems impossible then reply as soon as he hits the
send button. No client likes to wait for a reply. So
who replies first gets the job.

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Thursday, October 19, 2006

How to improve your translations?

How to improve your translations

Translation offers a rewarding if sometimes frustrating challenge. Here are a few tips to make your translating more enjoyable, more fluent and more successful.

These tips assume that you already have the basic equipment (good bilingual dictionaries, thesaurus, encyclopedia and basic computer skills).


What to do before starting
Research - the difference 30 minutes can make
How to make it sound natural
Does it sing?
Keep in touch
Know your limits
Read through it when it's done


What to do before starting

Read and understand the text you are about to translate from start to finish. Now go and make a cup of tea, enjoy the garden or have a good night’s sleep before returning to the text. Just as children need sleep to process all the exciting things they’ve been doing all day, I find translating more straightforward, more fluent and more enjoyable when I’ve slept on the source text before starting. If time is tight, however, you’ll just have to make do with a break.

Research

Just 30 minutes (the more time you invest the better the translation) of research on the translation subject can make all the difference to the finished job. Visit a good target-language website on the subject and make written and mental notes about the kind of language used. This is also a good time to clear up any difficulties you discovered while reading through the text in step one.

How to make it sound natural

To be convincing it has to sound natural. As far as writing style is concerned, this is the most difficult part of all. The trick is to understand what the writer of the source language is saying, how he wants to bring it across and what the overall message is. If you have read through the text from start to finish, you will already know this. Now, with this in mind and while not leaving out any of the key pieces of information, write the same message in your own words. Don't be blinded by the words used in the source language. As translators, we have time to choose the right words for the perfect sentence.

Make it sing

Like all writing, the more the text sings, the more convincing, the more enjoyable and the more successful it will be. Use your thesaurus, be bold by adding “ing” to your verbs and nouns and don't be afraid to use a warm, comforting and reassuringly “English” introductory start to your sentence (some of my favorites here include 'indeed’, ‘to this end’, ‘moreover’, ‘as far as xxx is concerned’, ‘in terms of’ etc.).

Keep in touch

Because I translate into English but live in Germany, listening to English radio, reading English books and visiting English-language websites helps me to keep my translations fresh. Sometimes you can also adapt what you read and hear to good effect for your translations. A good example of this is the time I was struggling to think of a short catchy advertising phrase for a German hearing aid manufacturer. I came across a slogan in my local newspaper for a completely different product and, suddenly, the perfect slogan just came to mind: “...because hearing can be hard enough".

Be confident but know your limits

While it’s true, of course, that translation encompasses a huge spectrum of subjects and a wide range of styles, confident translation, that is, translation that is bold and brave enough to stray a little from the source text, will in most contexts turn out well. Translators, however, are rather like cricketers. There are good bowlers, good batters and good fielders, but there are very few really good all-rounders. Know your limits. Some translators I know can hit every complex legal text they come across for six. Yet give them a marketing text and they’re stumped! Unless you happen to be the Ian Botham of the translating world – play to your strengths.

Read through it when it's done

Ideally, you will have time to read through your translation the day after completing it. While this can be time consuming, it’s essential. You will find that taking the time to give your words, sentences and paragraphs the finishing touches will make all the difference. Never think you’re finished until you’ve read through it all again. And don't make my favorite mistake: forgetting the spellchecker.

If you have enjoyed reading these tips and found them helpful, you might want to consider linking to this page - just to give me encouragement you understand.
Source:http://www.twigg.de/tips.htm

Friday, October 13, 2006

How to create a pdf ?

It is easy for you to create a pdf using a program
like
Adobe Acrobat. You can even try it online, at no
charge at
http://createpdf.adobe.com

Translation industry has vast potential in India: Pitroda

Nation : Translation industry has vast potential in
India: Pitroda

Posted by admin on 2006/10/11 10:00:12
http://www.teluguportal.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=17237

New Delhi, Oct 11 (IANS) The translation industry has
the potential to generate more than 500,000 jobs in
India, and necessary recommendations would be made to
exploit the potential, said Knowledge Commission
Chairman Sam Pitroda Wednesday.

"We are working towards strengthening the translation
industry by opening state-run training institutions
and then open it for the private sector," Pitroda said
at a discussion organised by the Confederation of
Indian Industry (CII) here.

"The translation industry in India has been neglected
so far. India is a diverse country and we don't
understand each other's culture or languages. Why
can't a Bengali work be translated into a Gujarati
work?" he queried.

"That's the only way knowledge can be truly imparted."

Pitroda said the entire education system in India
needed a complete overhauling - right from
government-run schools to institutions of higher
education - since education was becoming a privilege
for the few who could afford it.

He added that the Knowledge Commission - set up by
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2005 - has given a
set of 10 recommendations in this regard to the
government and another set of 10 suggestions would be
made in a couple of months.

"Our recommendations cover areas like increasing the
number of universities to 1,500 from 350 in the next
few years. We have also given recommendations on
libraries, affirmative action, language, translations,
literacy and programmes," said Pitroda.

He hoped the recommendations would trigger wide
debates in society, and said: "I want criticism to
arise because that is how there will be change in
people's mindsets, which is very important for the
country to develop."

Pitroda - who led India's telecommunications
revolution of the 1980s and headed the Technology
Mission that covered areas like drinking water and
edible oils - said the government had accepted the
commission's paper on e-governance.

The Chicago-based technocrat-entrepreneur - who is
also part of a UN committee to help push technology
across the globe in the 21st century - said India had
a long way to go before it could call itself a
superpower.