October Workshops: From Basics to L10n
By Raffaella Buschazzio and Peter A. Gergay
Getting Started in T&I
On October 15th, NCTA welcomed over 50 people to our workshop, “Getting Started in T&I.” Norma Kaminsky, an M.D. and an ATA-certified English-Spanish translator in medical, pharmaceutical, and other health-related subjects, opened the workshop by sharing basic concepts for beginning translators, presenting the pros and cons of working for agencies, direct clients, and in-house, and the resources translators need, from office space to computers and software, to a well-stocked library.
Jacki Noh, a Korean translator/interpreter specializing in a variety of fields, continued the workshop by focusing on interpretation. She began her presentation by underlining how essential it is for an interpreter to be truly bilingual and bicultural, and to have intellectual curiosity. Then she explained the distinctions between modes and types of interpretation, going into detail on how to become a court and healthcare interpreter.
The workshop ended with a presentation by Karl Kaussen, founder and proprietor of Biotext LLC. Dr. Kaussen focused on the translator-agency relationship, providing useful advice on how to be competitive, how to build up a good reputation among agencies, and how to discuss rates – a ticklish question and not only for newbies in the field! R.B.
Introduction to Software Localization
Some 40 NCTA members attended an informative “Introduction to Software Localization” seminar on October 29th, led by Angelika Zerfass, a recognized leader in the industry. Ms. Zerfass spoke about the concept and practice of localization (l10n) currently sweeping the translation market. She defined localization as “the process of adapting a product or software to a specific culture or geographical area so that the translation flows naturally to the users in that particular region.”
Ms. Zerfass emphasized the need to have a valid localization plan, a project structure, and access to current and valid files, to counter the many things that may go wrong in the areas of templates, translation memories, abbreviations, and more, sometimes due simply to plain inattentiveness to seemingly minor but essential details.
Our shrinking world and an ever-expanding global marketplace clearly point to localization as the wave of the future – something, Ms. Zerfass indicated, that many good translators have been doing in their work already, without being aware of the formal name of the process. P.A.G.
