The king’s speech (not to mention the queen and the presidents’)

It’s been quite a month for historic speeches in the UK and Ireland, with the speeches by Queen Elizabeth, President McAleese and President Obama during the Queen’s State Visit to Ireland and President Obama’s to Ireland and the UK.

And it’s been the year of The King’s Speech (the film, that is), featuring Lionel Logue and his role as speech therapist to the Duke of York (later King George VI).

This British Pathé newsreel film shows King George VI opening the Empire Exhibition at Ibrox Park, Glasgow, Scotland. It’s painful to watch: the King’s speech is “somewhat laboured and he has problems getting some of his words out”. But he does manage to complete the speech — which must have taken a great deal of courage.

Ben Zimmer wrote about the film and about Lionel Logue’s role in his The King’s Tongue Twisters article in the New York Times’ now sadly defunct On Language column. He said that the speech therapist’s “focus on vocal mechanics in treating King George was most likely just a means to an end, enforcing a bond of trust with his royal patient”. Colin Firth, who played King George, said that “It’s actually friendship and intimacy that galvanizes him, not diaphragm work.”

What’s the message here for translators, writers or editors? It’s that you need to put your clients (and their readers or listeners) in first place and provide them with added value. By giving King George the added value of sympathy and friendship, Lionel Logue made himself indispensable to the King. He  became a “go-to” support.

For me this has been a speech-flavoured working week — I’ve been asked to translate two speeches, both of them urgent and with practically no notice. I took on these jobs because they were for very good clients who had themselves been been put in an urgent spot. They were also a great opportunity for me to provide them with that added value.

I’ll be writing more about this in my next post but in the meantime here are some of those landmark speeches and some information on Lionel Logue.

Remarks by President McAleese at a State Dinner in honour of Queen Elizabeth II, Dublin Castle, 18th May 2011

The Queen’s speech at the Irish State Dinner, 18 May 2011

Remarks by President Obama and Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom in Dinner Toasts, Buckingham Palace, London, United Kingdom

Remarks by the President to Parliament Westminster Hall, London, United Kingdom

Lionel Logue: Pioneer speech therapist (1880-1953). By Caroline Bowne (2002)

By Marian Dougan

Stormy weather

Stormy weather, written by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler and here sung by Lena Horne, from the film of the same name. I should clarify that it’s blowing a gale here in Scotland today — trees uprooted and blocking the roads, trains cancelled, people stranded. Hence the choice of music.

By Marian Dougan

Passionate about perspective

Have you got any website words that set your teeth on edge? “Passionate” is one of mine, as in “we’re passionate about quality” (or about our work, our clients etc).

First, it’s over-used and doesn’t do anything to distinguish company A from company B. If everybody’s passionate about their work and their clients, where’s the unique selling point?

And second, I don’t think it’s appropriate. I love and am enthusiastic about my job and feel privileged to be a translator and editor. I care a lot about producing good-quality work for my clients and helping them communicate better.

I have loads of enthusiasms. But the one thing in life I’m really passionate about is my family. That’s it. (I’ve thought a lot about this and in the end decided that not even chocolate, shoes or G&T with lime qualified).

Jonathan Downie of Integrity Languages posted a tweet this morning which makes a similar point from a Christian perspective.

http://twitter.com/#!/jonathanddownie/status/72575954265976832

It’s all about perspective and degree.

By Marian Dougan

We have ways of making you pay (we wish)

If you run your own business, you surely know (and if you don’t, your accountant will soon tell you) that cash-flow is king. There’s no point having thousands of pounds/euros/dollars in the payment pipeline if your bank account’s empty and you can’t pay your suppliers (or, ultimately, the mortgage).

I work a lot with Italian public sector clients so I know what I’m talking about.*

One of the problems is that you feel powerless. You’ve kept your side of the bargain: you’ve done the work, you’ve submitted your invoice and now your clients are placing you in an untenable position that’s putting your business and reputation at risk. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

Well, maybe there is something you can do. My system is to send out a reminder to clients that an invoice will soon be due for payment, about 5-7 days before the due date. I word it nicely, the degree of formality depending on how well I know the client. If, one week after the due date, they still haven’t paid, I send out a further politely worded reminder, specifying the date by which I’d like the payment to be made.

When the client does pay, I follow up with a brief “thank you” message.

One of my clients used to say that she never paid an invoice until her suppliers reminded her to. And just last week I discovered that an invoice I’d sent to another client in early April hadn’t been recorded at their end, and was only discovered when they received my reminder. They’ve now introduced a new procedure to ensure that my invoices go directly to the right person in accounts.

So it pays to jog your clients’ memory.

Just sitting around complaining about late-paying clients won’t solve any problems. And sending out reminders won’t necessarily speed things up, if your client is determined to hold out until the last possible minute (they’re under cash-flow pressures too). But if you take some initiative, you’ll feel less powerless and more in control. If your client still doesn’t pay on time, at least you’ll know that you’ve acted in a business-like way.

*But a huge thanks to Stefano, who got my 2 May invoice processed and into my bank account in just 18 days!!!

By Marian Dougan

Top 100 Language Blogs 2011 – voting now open

Vote the Top 100 Language Professionals Blogs 2011 Voting is now open for the Top 100 Language Blogs 2011 competition organised by LexioPhiles, for which we’ve been nominated in the “Language Professionals” category. Voting takes place from 17 to 29 May 2011.

If you’d like to vote for Words to good effect, you can do so here.

Thank you!

By Marian Dougan

Converting PDFs (at a reasonable price) without losing the formatting — or your temper.

Back in November 2010 I wrote about Nitro Software’s free PDF to Word web-based application for converting PDF files (with graphics) to editable Word files (with the graphics more or less intact).

Since then, I’ve invested in Docudesk’s deskUNPDF convertor, which costs about $70 for a single-user licence (add another 14 or 20 dollars if you want 2- or 3-year “new-version assurance”, i.e. access to up-grades).

I chose deskUNPDF because it’s available for Macs and, as a desk-top application, solves the confidentiality problem posed by web-based apps. I’d also been finding that Nitro’s PDF-to-Word conversion was taking longer and longer (hours, sometimes) to process. A final advantage with Docudesk is that it produces cleaner and more complete conversions — with PDF to Word, some table and graphs had remained difficult to edit.

Windows users will probably have a wider range of options, but as a Mac user I think deskUNPDF is a good investment.

If you’ve made any good software discoveries that boost your productivity, share them in the comments!

By Marian Dougan

The linguistic expertise of British diplomacy

The British Foreign Minister, William Hague, has just made a statement to Parliament on Britain’s future diplomatic network (11 May 2011). It describes some of the spending cuts, rationalisation and refocusing of the UK’s diplomatic network that will be taking place throughout the current Parliament. Mr Hague adds that:

This development of our network should be seen alongside the Diplomatic Excellence initiative which I have instigated in the FCO and which began six months ago. This places a renewed emphasis on policy creativity, in depth knowledge of other nations, geographic and linguistic expertise and the enhancement of traditional diplomatic skills in a manner suitable for the modern world.

The bolding is mine. I think it’s great that William Hague values linguistic expertise and the in-depth knowledge of other nations that often goes with it. But I’m wondering how Britain is going to nurture those qualities if our schools and universities go on slashing language courses.

By Marian Dougan

Calm down dear, it’s only language

Richard Alcock, the Guardian newspaper’s business production editor, has written a post in the Mind Your Language blog offering David Cameron advice on the use of catchphrases. The post is inspired by the Prime Minister’s recent use of “Calm down dear” when addressing Angela Eagle, a female Labour Party MP — and Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, no less. Her retort was: “I’ve been patronised by better people than the prime minister”.

What I found most interesting about the post were the following comments by Mr. Alcock:

The prime minister seems to take an unfortunately simplistic approach to language, believing that words have their dictionary meanings and should be understood as such. […]

But well-known phrases come freighted with meanings that underlie the plain black and white of the words, particularly catchphrases, which exist like cultural artefacts and must be “read” in their socio-cultural context, deconstructed, their real significance unpacked. […]

So here to help the prime minister are a few more catchphrases […] with explanations of their context and underlying meaning. […]

So context matters, and the obvious meaning isn’t always the real meaning.

Translators, does any of the above strike a chord?

By Marian Dougan

Take our poll: should new clients test your skills or hire you on trust?

The Institute of Translation and Interpreting’s 25th Anniversary Conference took place in Birmingham on 7-8 May. It was a fantastic event that gave us all lots to think about and plenty of great ideas to put into practice.

One of the workshops, No translator is an island, examined the sort of human interactions translators have to deal with in their work. A scenario that got the group pretty riled up was being asked to do test translations, especially unpaid ones. Yet many professionals and business owners offer a free consultation or trial run before you commit to their service. Marketing consultants or designers come to mind. Even lawyers.

Anyway, I thought it might be interesting to do a poll on this subject and compare the views of translators with those of other business owners.

For the record. I don’t like doing test translations but think a new client is justified in asking for one — of around 250 words, say — without charge or else payable on completion of the main project. As long as that project is reasonably long and/or will potentially lead to more work. However, if an agency I’d been working with for some time asked me to do a test — at the client’s behest — for what would end up being the agency’s new client, I’d expect the agency to pay me for it.

But I do see the client’s point of view on this issue. And, as top translator Chris Durban pointed out, translation clients can have a pretty tough time.

So, take the poll and let me know what you think. Or throw rotten tomatoes at me in the comments.

No translator is an island was led — with great professionalism and emotional intelligence (about which more later) — by Isabel Hurtado de Mendoza and Betti Moser.

By Marian Dougan

Who are you calling feisty?!?

Yikes! I was browsing through the Online Etymology Dictionary for -le frequentatives the other day, as you do, and eventually arrived at the etyolomogical definition of feisty (I was looking for “fizzle”, but one’s as bad as the other, frankly).

feisty 1896, “aggressive, exuberant, touchy,” Amer.Eng., with -y (2) + feist “small dog,” earlier fice, fist (Amer.Eng., 1805); short for fysting curre “stinking cur,” attested from 1520s, from M.E. fysten, fisten “break wind” (mid-15c.); related to O.E. fisting “stink,” from P.Gmc. *fistiz- “a fart,” said to be from PIE *pezd- (see fart), but there are difficulties [you can say that again!]. The 1811 slang dictionary defines fice as “a small windy escape backwards, more obvious to the nose than ears; frequently by old ladies charged on their lap-dogs.” Cf. also Dan. fise “to blow, to fart,” and obsolete English askefise, lit. “fire-blower, ash-blower,” from an unrecorded O.N. source, used in M.E. for a kind of bellows, but originally “a term of reproach among northern nations for an unwarlike fellow who stayed at home in the chimney corner” [OED].

feist also fist, “a breaking wind, foul smell, fart,” mid-15c. (O.E. had prp. fisting), a general W.Gmc. word; cf. M.Du. veest, Du. vijst (see feisty).

fizzle (v.) 1530s, “to break wind without noise,” probably altered from obsolete fist, from M.E. fisten “break wind” (see feisty) + frequentative suffix -le. Related: Fizzled; fizzling. Noun sense of “failure, fiasco” is from 1846, originally U.S. college slang for “failure in an exam.” Barnhart says it is “not considered as derived from the verb.” The verb in this sense is from 1847.

All I can say is, ladies, if anyone ever calls you “feisty”, biff ’em one on the schnozzle.

By Marian Dougan