Past Events
Joint translation workshop
A report by Adrian Korynek.
The joint workshop of the ITI NERG and the Yorkshire Translators & Interpreters held in York on the afternoon of the 8 November 2008 was well attended and provided a good opportunity to get to know people and/or to renew old acquaintances.
Split up into different groups (a large German-English group and smaller groups for French-English, English-French, Spanish-English and English-Spanish), participants tackled the translation of texts in whatever way they saw fit over a set time. After that all the groups came together again and a spokesperson from each group reported on the key points that had come out of the particular group’s discussions.
Finally, one participant, who translates into English from Chinese and Japanese, gave a brief, but very interesting presentation on the difficulties of translating from these languages; e.g. no distinction between singular and plural in Chinese.
It was well worth the trip to York.
Another similar event – further north – is on the cards for the future.
Meeting on 2 October 2008 at Ponteland Community High School
At this meeting our members Pat Walton and Stefania Williams spoke about their experience in working directly with end-clients and through agencies.
Pat worked for the most part directly with end-clients, whilst agencies provided most of Stefania’s work. Their presentations provided the starting point for discussion among the nine people present about the advantages and disadvantages of the different sources of work. A valuable exchange of experience took place.
Translators’ resources on the net: what is ProZ.com?
This was the theme of a meeting held at Ponteland Community High School on 24 April 2008.
Stefania Williams described the main features of ProZ:
* A translators’ community, where translators and clients meet
* Glossaries – available to non-members
* Contact with agencies (blue board)
* Web pages for individual translators
* Forums (e.g. on Trados)
* Kudoz – for difficult terms you can ask help from other translators
* Creates networks, including with translators from other languages
An individual webpage includes a photograph of the translator, the usual information about languages translated, years of experience, fields of expertise etc., and also gives Kudoz activity, both in terms of questions asked, and questions answered.
Membership of ProZ costs $130 a year, or $70 for a reduced profile. It is also possible to register for free and still take advantage of some of the facilities.
Stefania reckons that Proz is for you if:
* You like the internet and e-commerce;
* You feel isolated working at home;
* You keep up with technology
* You are familiar with email communication
* You are good at international communication
It is less useful if you are already in a network, you mainly obtain work by face-to-face meetings or by word of mouth, and if you don’t like email communication.
Eugene Browne also spoke briefly about Powwows – informal get-togethers of ProZ.com users living in close proximity, sometimes with computer link-ups to translators in other parts of the world.
Friday 25 January
The post-Christmas social event was held at Elizabeth Grayson's house on Friday 25 January. Those fortunate enough to attend enjoyed, among other things, Austrian open sandwiches, Brazilian vegetable salad, Russian borsch, English apple pie, and wurst specially brought in from Germany by Ian Grayson.
Thursday 22 November 2007
This event comprised presentations by three of our members:
Corrine Boyens on some of the problems encountered by freelance translators;
Rosemary Mitchell on translation memory software;
Adrian Korynek on the recently-introduced translation standard.
Although there was a relatively modest turn-out of just 8 members, it was a very informative meeting with plenty of time for informal discussion.
Saturday 16 June 2007
Back in the summer our annual walk took us beside the Tees from Low Force to High Force, returning on the other side of the valley and concluding with a visit to Gibson’s Cave. Despite a doubtful forecast, the weather stayed fair until after lunch, and the heavy rain in the preceding days made the waterfalls a wonderful sight.
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