We’ve already given our dos and don’ts for clients who want to buy translation services, but what about those selling them? Yes, I’m talking about translators - the missing link in our business equation. Those who help us make it happen for each and every one of our clients.

Here is an early Christmas gift - just a few pointers for translators who are looking to increase their client base (and in the current economic climate, who isn’t?) by applying to agencies.

1. Your CV: Cast a critical eye over your CV. The same rules generally apply for translators as they do for anyone applying for work: anything over 2 pages is just too long. Two pages is ample to give an overview of your relevant experience, qualificiations and specialist subjects - you can keep a list of translation projects you’ve worked on separately, then it’s ready to provide should someone ask for it. Doesn’t belong in your CV!

2. Please please please send your rates with the CV. Even if you negotiate with clients for most projects - your rates may or may not be be the deciding factor in whether you will be approached for a particular project, but you’ll almost never be added to an agency’s internal database without them.

3. Only mother tongue language as target please. “Near-native” strikes me as a vague and somewhat worrying term, and most agencies worth their salt will not use a translator who works into any language that is not their mother tongue. Interpreting and other types of language work are a different matter, each situation may call for something different.

4. Email it. Most agencies won’t thank you for a printed copy these days, as then someone has to input the information into whatever database they use. Don’t even get me started on faxing.

5. Describe yourself. It doesn’t have to be long, and a traditional covering letter may not be appropriate if you are sending your CV speculatively, but do mention your language combinations either in the subject line, or the body of your message. A short description of the type of work you are most interested or experienced in will stick in the memory of whoever receives your message. Many companies also file emails for future use, so this will be a great help if they can search for the language or specialised subject they need at that time, and your message will be found easily.

6. Offer references. Better still, include a couple in your CV as standard, if you have space.

7. Test pieces. We know no-one likes to work for free, but this can be a very effective way to get particular ongoing or large projects from agencies, and also to pick up other additional work from them along the way. Most project managers feel more secure using a translator they know has been tested, even if not for the specific project they are working on. If you are willing to do a test piece of reasonable length (no more than 200-300 words) for free, you could get a lot more work from that company. Unfortunately there is no guarantee of this, just as there is no guarantee that the agency themselves will get the work.

Keep one thing in mind: Project Managers are busy, so the easier you make the processes of remembering you, contacting you and working with you during a project, the more they will want to use you.

Happy Hunting!

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Yesterday, it was 60 years since the Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations’ General Assembly (that makes the year 1948, just in case you’re in the throws of a mid-week lull and can’t do the maths).

Clearly, that was as great a day for humanity as the day a certain snake tricked poor Eve into eating an apple wasn’t. But it was also the beginning of a long story for the translation industry. The Guiness Book of Records claims said document is the most translated text in the world - available at last count in 337 languages. (This sparked debate in the office as the Holy Bible, as commented on recently by me, is available in over 2000 languages: something must exclude it from the running - probably its confabulated nature.) Many of those languages are ones we, as a translation agency, have never even heard of - Huasteco, anyone? (spoken in Mexico) - and include even the synthetic language, Esperanto.

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Max Planck Institute Science journal mistakenly uses flyer for Macau brothel to illustrate report on China…

The respected research institute wanted beautiful and elegant Chinese classical texts to adorn its journal, which included a special report on China. Little did they know that the text they had chosen was from a saucy flyer promoting stirppers and other features of a brothel!

To Western eyes, Chinese characters look dramatic and beautiful, and have a powerful visual impact, but be careful that you know what they say before you print or publish whatever you are using them for!

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In this country, despite our multicultural make up, we have only one Official Language for our 60 or so million inhabitants. That language is, unless you’re from Barnsley, English. The minority languages recognized on these shores are Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Lowland Scots and Cornish and rather suprisingly do not include any Asian langugaes, despite a long history of immigrants from that area.

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‘A single 30 minute lesson’ would probably be the answer to that questions from many of my collegiate peers past, but are we really, scientifically, limited by anything other than apathy?

It is true that there is a critical period for learning one’s native language as a child: feral children raised in solitude without any linguistic stimuli (or ‘negative feedback’ as it’s technically called) prove this when they are returned to society in their teens, yet remain unable to string together even a simple sentence. But what about the acquisition of a second, third, fourth or even fifth language?

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Now, the unwritten rules of this company blog (which, post-ironically, have been written down), clearly state that any self, or client slanted, promotion is punishable by death: we have a website for such things. Having said that, and at the risk of corporate punishment, two projects deserve to have at least a little digital ink spent on them…

Most summers are remembered by an effeminate pop song, the social slaughter that is Big Brother and, in this country at least, an ongoing disappointment at the crude and rainy weather. Not so for Jenn, though, Chief Project Manager here at Web-Translations, who was pinned down with the task of coordinating the translation, localisation and launch of over 2000 products and 500, 000 words into German for online camera specialists, Warehouse Express.

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I reckon subtitlers must be well in demand going on the amount of subtitled content we’ve been seeing on our screens of late.

Now, as a linguist and having spent many of my language-learning student years with my eyes glued to that bar at the bottom of the screen, I’m no stranger to subtitles. In fact, I am eternally grateful for the invention as, without them, not only would we be missing out on hours of Kung-Fu lips-moving-no-speaking hilarity, but I’d have been lost in the midst of countless French films, despite learning the language for most of my conscious life.

But what’s with all the subtitling of English speaking people that’s happening at the moment?

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It occured to me today that translation and foreign languages litter everyday life, even for those of us whom aren’t in some way married to the industry.

Take a moody, emotionally charged teen for instance; nothing but a disinterest in foreign languages plagues their consciousness, yet their subconscious is perpetually peppered with alien tongues.

From the perfunctory ramblings of Pete Doherty on ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ (meaning ‘work makes you free’ - words which hung over concentration camps in war time Germany) to the twisted sonics of unintelligible, yet enjoyable, Scandanavian crew, Sigur Ros: multilingual-ness is everywhere.

So, too, are many English words used without a thought for their origin. Cliché, for example: a French word which comes from a time saving process typists used to use. For frequently occurring phrases, one slug of metal was cast to save typing each letter of each word out every time, and that slug was termed a cliché. A word which now describes an idea that has been overused to the point of losing its intended force or novelty.

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Introducing Mr Jack Dunwell, one of Web-Translations’ prized French to English legal translators, and his abstract, poetic thoughts on being a freelancer…

Free At Last, Debbie

When did I lose my autonomy?
To this 5 am drive
I can’t even find my trouser legs
Without falling over
My socks
Without gasping?
At the night walk
The night walk

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Well, actually, you couldn’t, because today I am talking about whistled languages.

They may be as rare as an honest politician, but they exist, or existed, all the same, and not just in the enchanted forests of the seven dwarfs. On the island of La Gomera in the Canary Islands, for instance, or in Turkey (Kusköy, “Village of the Birds”), France (the village of Aas in the Pyrenees), Mexico (the Mazatecs and Chinantecs of Oaxaca), South America (Pirahã), Asia (the Chepang of Nepal), and New Guinea.

It is in West Africa, though, that the sound of whistling is most common. Widely used in languages like Yoruba and Ewe, even the finest of the romance languages, French, is whistled in some places.

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