yndigo

Project Manager meets the real world

A friend and one-time project manager, Alyssa, once described the role of the translation project manager as a nexus of abuse — abuse coming from both client and translator — often with no authority to vent the frustration in either direction (some translators may beg do differ with me on [...]

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Client meets translator

While applying for a teaching fellowship to France back in 1993, I needed my birth certificate translated into French, so I went to the consulate in Boston to find out how to do it. They gave me a list of translators and phone numbers and told me I should expect to pay about [...]

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Beyond words: Collocations

If you don’t have one, get one. It’s not the reference book I use most, but it’s definitely my favorite. It’s the BBI Dictionary of Word Combinations, by Morton Benson, Evelyn Benson and Robert Ilson.
According to Wikipedia’s entry on the topic, a collocation refers to “the restrictions on how words can be [...]

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The state of terminology research on-line and off

A proper translator’s resume used to include a line about the hundreds of dictionaries she had in her library. This practice is fading as the Internet’s content grows more comprehensive. Many early Internet glossaries, like sites in general, were inchoate and neglected, and “real” dictionaries remained indispensible. One [...]

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