Not love, not money. It’s translation that makes the world go round.

In an article in the Huffington Post marking International Translation Day (celebrated on 30 September), Nataly Kelly, Chief Research Officer at Common Sense Advisory and co-author of “Found in Translation”, listed 10 ways that translation benefits us all:

1. Translation saves lives.
2. Translation prevents terror.
3. Translation keeps the peace.
4. Translation elects world leaders.
5. Translation creates jobs.
6. Translation fuels the economy.
7. Translation entertains us.
8. Translation tests our faith.
9. Translation feeds the world.
10. Translation makes us fall in love.

Here’s Nataly’s full article: 10 Ways Translation Shapes Your Life.

Do you agree with Nataly’s points, translators and non-translators? Can you think of other ways translation shapes our lives?

By Marian Dougan

Reading the past in Turkey

As I mentioned in my last post, about the perils of leaving your computer unattended for too long, we spent our summer holiday in Turkey this year.

One of the books I took with me was The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller. I’d like to say this was a carefully considered choice on my part, given that much of the story unfolds during the siege of Troy. Troy was located in north-west Anatolia, in what is now Turkey (of course I knew that). The Turkish connection didn’t enter my head when I drew up my shopping list and headed off to the book-shop. The Song of Achilles was on the list because it won this year’s Orange Prize for Fiction, I’d seen a couple of enthusiastic reviews, and, most important, Waterstones was promoting it in a “buy one get one half-price” deal.

However, it turned out to be an apt choice. We were in southern Turkey, on the Mediterranean coast. So not near Troy, but in the area that was ancient Lycia. It was a strange experience — eerie, almost — to visit Xanthos or Patara, say, and then just a couple of days later, in the novel, see the Lycian army arriving to help defend Troy. Or to read about Achilles’ sea-goddess mother, Thetis, and then see her depicted in a mosaic in Antalya museum, dipping her son in the river Styx. History coming to life, indeed.

By the way: one of the nice things about the villa where we stayed, the lovely Villa Castle, was the “library”, a bookshelf of novels left behind by previous residents, signed, dated and bearing the message “Please keep the library going”.

Confession: I ended up bringing most of my holiday books back unread (likewise clothes and sandals — most of them brought back unworn). But at least I’ve got a good supply for the next few months: I love that feeling of having a pile of books waiting to be chosen and read.

Did you read any good books on holiday? Tell us about them in the comments!

By Marian Dougan

Back up!

Parts of the UK have been having horrible weather for the last few days, with flooding and, in Aberdeen, a weird seafoam* invading the Footdee neighbourhood, while is well worth a visit, by the way (preferably without foam). Here in Bearsden, just north of Glasgow, however, it’s a beautiful day.

*(or “spume”, from the Latin spuma. This is a language blog, remember).

I’m still feeling in summer mood, even though it’ll soon be autumn (already is? I’m never sure when the seasons officially begin). Maybe it’s because I’ve had such an unusual summer. I spent much of June and July on training courses: all of the Legal Terminology for Translators workshops run in London by David Hutchins of Lexacom Legal, and the Université d’été for Financial Translators, organised by the Société française des traducteurs in Paris. Next, in August and into September, my longest ever vacation — three wonderful weeks in Turkey (Kalkan and Antalya). And then my daughter moved to Leeds to study music, making us empty-nesters, at least in term time.

Bye-bye hard drive

When I got back from Turkey, my iMac wouldn’t start up. It turned out the hard drive needed to be replaced. I’d backed up all of our computers before leaving — thank goodness. So I’ve still got all my files, photos, applications, emails and so on. I’ve decided to do some spring-cleaning (autumn-cleaning?) and weed out all the junk as I re-install.

I had files dating back to 2001 on that computer, so that’s a lot of junk. But it’s a great feeling to get rid of all those useless, space-hogging files. And an even greater feeling to know that, even with hard drive failure, all of the important files were safe. So the moral of this post is: back up, and back up frequently.

By Marian Dougan

Olympic Opening Ceremony. British and proud of it… but not English

I’ve just seen a comment on Twitter that sent my Scottish/British blood pressure sky-high. Italian journalist Gianni Riotta, commenting on the opening ceremony, said that it illustrated “straordinaria sicurezza identita’ inglese”: essentially, the English people’s extraordinary sense of, and confidence in, their national identity, to the extent of being able to laugh at themselves. Mr. Riotta wondered if the Italians or French could do the same (can you, French and Italian readers?)

I watched the ceremony from start to finish. It did indeed underscore and reinforce my sense of national identity. Which is not English.

The ceremony was wonderfully inclusive. It included performers, athletes and volunteers from all over the United Kingdom. It included children’s choirs filmed in the stadium and in beautiful settings in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Here they are, courtesy of the BBC.

It included Emeli Sandé, a Scottish singer with a Zambian father and an English mother. And it included the Scottish Sir Chris Hoy, for Pete’s sake, carrying the flag for (please take note, Mr. Riotta) the Great Britain and Northern Ireland Olympic Team.

Just to keep some balance here, I got equally riled by Alec Salmond’s coining of the ridiculou “Scolympians”, for Scottish Olympians. Are the Welsh Team-GB members to be dubbed “Wolympians”?

Disclosure: some of my best friends are English.

By Marian Dougan

Word of the moment: it’s just (in)credible.

Do you ever find that a certain word or phrase keeps cropping up in your work? In your source material, I mean, not your end-product.

For me right now it’s “credibility” (or credibilità, to be precise). That’s because I do a lot of translation and editing for Italian government organisations and Italy is focused on rebuilding its international credibility. So in speeches by the Italian Foreign Minister and President Napolitano (yes, name-dropping), the word “credibility” crops up over and over again.

This may just be “‘frequency illusion’ – the illusion in which a word, a name or other thing that has recently come to one’s attention suddenly appears ‘everywhere’ with improbable frequency” (thank you, Wikipedia, and here are more forms of cognitive bias for you to while away some time with).

“Credible” or “credibility” occurred 9 times in the UK Chancellor’s Mansion House Speech on 13 April on the state of the economy on 13 April:

  1. This Coalition Government […] set out a credible and steady plan to reduce our country’s record deficit
  2. The credibility of our strategy has been rewarded in the markets
  3. it would be perverse to argue that the credibility of the UK’s fiscal consolidation has not been a crucial factor
  4. Indeed it is our fiscal credibility that has created the space for the Bank of England to undertake QE [quantitative easing] on a large scale
  5. So promises of consolidation tomorrow are not credible
  6. the balance of risks in the UK argues strongly in favour of credible deficit reduction
  7. credibility is hard-won and easily lost, and losing it is extremely costly
  8. the credibility we have enables us to do a great deal more than some other countries at present
  9. we can also use the credibility of the public sector balance sheet to support investment and the flow of credit now

George Osborne was referring to the credibility of the UK’s policies and strategies, while Italian politicians (in the texts I’ve been working on, anyway) have been focusing on the credibility of Italy itself.

As a translator, I can’t help but wonder: if credibility is so important, why do so many Italian institutions, businesses and organisations entrust their translation projects to charlatans — or amateurs, to give them the benefit of the doubt — who churn out sheer guff?

Anyway, that grumble aside, a question: have you noticed any words or phrases cropping up more frequently than usual in your source material? Let us know in the comments!

By Marian Dougan

Top 100 Language Blogs 2012 – the results are in!

“Words to good effect” is one of the winning blogs in the Top 25 Language Professionals Blogs 2012 competition organised by LexioPhiles and Bab.La. We came 11th, and are totally chuffed!

A big Thank You to everyone who voted for us, and to LexioPhiles and Bab.La for organising the competition.

By Marian Dougan

Lingua franca: English vs Latin

Have you ever wondered why English beat Latin to become the world’s lingua franca? Here’s Eddie Izzard’s explanation.

Warning: Not Safe for Work, contains strong language.

By Marian Dougan

Communicating with clients: crystal clarity or muddy murk?

Radio Scotland news recently featured a hotel booking mix-up. A group of French tourists turned up at the Jura Hotel, on the Isle of Jura (off the west coast of Scotland), saying that they’d booked rooms there. The hotel owner had no record of a booking, and the hotel was full. When he checked their reservation form it turned out that they had indeed booked in to a Jura Hotel — in the Jura mountains in France.

This is pretty mystifying: how could you mix up the Jura mountains on the continent of Europe and a Scottish island on its western fringes? Maybe they were using a hotel aggregator website and didn’t check the hotels’ own sites.

Leaving this mystery aside, what struck me about this story was the Scottish hotel owner’s reaction.

He solved the immediate accommodation problem: some of the rooms were being renovated so he quickly cleaned up a couple of these for his unexpected guests, who had a great welcome and thoroughly enjoyed their stay. So that was good.

But speaking afterwards on Radio Scotland, the owner said he couldn’t understand how the Frenchmen had made the mistake. The reservation form they showed him was in French, and the room charges in euros. But all of the forms he sent out were in English, and charges in sterling. So the tourists should have realised the booking form hadn’t come from his hotel.

Whoa! Hold on a minute. How could the French tourists possibly know about the practices and procedures of the Jura Hotel (Scotland)?

This in turn got me thinking about my own — and other language businesses’ — communications with clients and potential clients. Every transaction with our clients should be part of our marketing strategy. Each email, quote, newsletter or invoice should be “on brand” and designed to establish and/or strengthen a good relationship with our clients.

How much knowledge do we take for granted on their part? How transparent are we? Do we think of our clients’ needs and assumptions, or our own?

For example, for clients in Italy I issue quotes and invoices in euros, on a “per page” basis, because that’s what my clients expect. For clients in the UK, I quote/invoice in sterling, on a “per word” basis. I offer them a standard rate and an “urgency surcharge” rate, with a delivery date for each. Pretty transparent, I thought, until I realised that I don’t specify to my Italian clients how a page is calculated (I use 1500 characters including spaces, source text).

As translators and editors, we sometimes feel that quantifying our work in “words” or “pages” diminishes it. I used to work with colleagues who felt that we should present our work on a “per project” basis. In other words, our clients shouldn’t really know what they were paying for. I no longer take this approach. If a job is particularly complex and requires not just linguistic expertise but days and possibly weeks of research (as is often the case), then my per-page fee will reflect that. Alternatively, I can itemise the quote: research, translation, proof-reading… But my clients should know what they’re paying for.

When I’m making a purchase, I like to have as much information as possible so that I can make a fully informed choice. Why should my clients be any different? Why shouldn’t they have the right to know what they’re paying for?

What do you think about this (pretty thorny) issue?

By Marian Dougan

Olympic Linguistic Games (2): a competition

Olympic Rings SketchHere’s a wee Olympic Games language competition for readers. No prizes, just the satisfaction of figuring out the acronym/initialism puzzle.

English-Polish translator Marta Stelmaszak has attended a training workshop on Language Services of the Olympics. Some of the acronyms/initialisms she found there are listed below. Can you guess what they mean?

DVPM
IOC/IPC
NOC/NPC
OCOG
VAPP

And have you come across any other Olympics-related language puzzlers, in English or your own language? Let us know in the comments!

Photo courtesy of Rareclass.

By Marian Dougan

Olympic linguistic games

Olympic RingsThe organisers of the 2012 Olympic Games are making a big effort to ensure that the whole of the United Kingdom feels included in the event. There was a great fuss on the BBC news yesterday (18 May) about the arrival and planned relay — covering the length and breadth of the UK, with a dip down to Dublin too — of the Olympic flame.

But if that effort is to be successful, they need to watch their language. Again on the BBC news, David Beckham expressed his delight that the Games were not just about England but also about east London, where he grew up. Erm, England, David?

And the news presenter made numerous — and very annoying, to anyone who hates inappropriate use of acronyms and initialisms — mentions of LOCOG. If you want an event to be inclusive, then the language you use needs to be inclusive too. Acronyms and initialisms are not inclusive. LOCOG stands for the “London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games”, which admittedly is a bit of a mouthful. So why not just use “organising committee”? We’d all get the message. With LOCOG, we don’t.

Glad I’ve got that off my chest.

Photo courtesy of Rareclass

By Marian Dougan