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Dear Netans,
A new business year is about to begin, and with it, a fresh year for NETA.
Last year, we had a full schedule of monthly meetings that included sessions on
localization, translation memory tools, voice recognition software, poetry translation,
human rights, and the differences between translation and interpreting. We also joined the
Global Business Alliance of New England (GBANE), an umbrella group of organizations
involved in international trade. We hope that over time, we will be in a position to go
before trade groups and discuss the importance of competent translation, and thereby make
NETA more of a portal for translation and interpreting work in the region. This project
will take time and energy. I would be pleased if it began to bear fruit in a year or two.
We also pulled off a very (for us) ambitious fair, which was the result of the efforts of
about a dozen or more NETA member volunteers.
This year, we will continue to work on what we have started. In addition, several people
have expressed an interest in organizing longer professional workshops. If the interest is
there, we will put our energies into that as well. So much depends on members stepping
forward to commit their time in order to realize the potential that is there.
Since the fair, NETA has gained about 60 new members. I still lack faces for many of the
new members we picked up the year before. Of course, the point of gaining new members is
not just to swell the rolls (and the NETA bank account), but to bring together people who
have a stake in building an even stronger and more vibrant professional organization for
translators. I hope to meet many of you over the course of the next year.
Sincerely,
Ken Kronenberg
President, NETA
The Spanish Division will be holding its annual meeting during the
upcoming ATA Conference in Orlando (Sept. 20–23). All of you who are members of the
Spanish Division are invited and encouraged to participate. This year we are introducing a
new feature. We will be raffling a series of dictionaries, reference materials, and
translation tools generously donated by several participating companies. All the specific
information will be appearing in the next issue of Intercambios.
See you in Orlando.
Conducting Internet Searches: Symbols to Know
There are four simple and important symbols to use in searches
and each one has a particular function.
The signs of plus and minus placed in front of a term or phrase will
allow you to add or exclude the term or phrase from the search.
The quotation marks allow you to search for complete phrases.
The symbol (*) allows you to broaden your search. (truncation,
wildcard)
For example:
- + Include the term in the search
- +respirator +hospital
- - Exclude the term from the search
- +respirator +hospital -paint
- "…" Search for the words as a phrase
- "assets and liabilities"
- * Search for words that begin with specified letters
- poli*, you will have hits for policy, politics, political, polite
(truncation)
- hon*r, you will have hits for honor, honour, Hon. (Placed after the
third letter, it will replace up to five letters.) (wildcard)
Important notes:
- Make sure the signs are placed immediately before the keywords or
phrases without any spaces between the sign and the term. You may use any or all
of the symbols within the same query, but it will be necessary to leave a space between
each keyword and phrase.
- Use lowercase letters to get all hits.
- Use the browser’s Find function (CTRL-F) to locate a term,
don’t scroll.
Glossaries
The Web is a great place to find various glossaries.
- To find a glossary in a specific field, enter:
+field +glossary
(Use the word for ‘glossary’ in the same language as the field.)
- To find a bilingual glossary in a specific field, enter:
+field +glossary +source language +target language
(Use the word for ‘glossary’ in either language; the combination of English,
anglais, French, or français is irrelevant.)
- To find a term in a glossary, enter:
+term +glossary
(Use the word for ‘glossary’ in the language of the term.)
Important Reminders
Validate your findings. Make sure the term works in the target
language in the proper context by looking it up again in the search engine.
Evaluate the quality. Find out if the solutions are acceptable. Check
the quality by looking at the language and the grammar.
Use more than one search engine.
Leave out nonessential words (of, and).
Replace accents with wildcards.
The May 2000 issue of Wired magazine had an extensive
section on machine translation. Watch for a review in December’s newsletter.
The last GBANE meeting prior to a summer recess was
facilitated by Kari Heistad of Creative Concepts. About 30 organizations were present,
among them NETA with two reps, Laura Nakazawa and Rudy Heller. The subject was membership:
How to attract members and how to retain them. Most of the member organizations at GBANE
differ from NETA in many ways. One difference is that our membership is for
individuals—not the case with foreign-American chambers of commerce, for example,
which have mostly organizations and corporations as members.
Kari's very capable way of eliciting responses led the group
through a series of exercises which showed that we all have similar concerns. The one that
hit closest to home for me was that people are so busy in their lives that in order to
have a successful event (meaning one that will attract lots of people), you must schedule
it on the right date and time, be at a good, central location, have free food, and offer
speakers that will make the reader of the proposed agenda whistle and say, "That, I
don't want to miss."
All thoughts to keep in mind for our next NETA Conference (except for the free food Bit,
which we could not afford with 200+ visitors).
Anyone interested in coming to a GBANE meeting with Laura and/or Rudy should contact us.
They are informative meetings with great promise for potential customers for NETA members.
They are also good opportunities to extol the virtues of our organization and get its name
and offerings out there among a very internationally oriented group of people and
organizations (read: potential translation users).
(John Rock is an ATA
member based in Houston, Texas. This article is a revised version of a presentation made
at the 1999 ATA Conference in St. Louis. It also appeared in the January 2000 issue of the
Gotham Translator and is reprinted with the author’s permission.)
| The
author voices some controversial opinions in this article. What do you think of them?
Would you like to see more controversial articles in this newsletter? Write a letter to
the editor and let everyone know: Diana Rhudick, 419 Grove St., Reading, MA 01867, or drhudick@mediaone.net |
The following are writings on ancient history penned by American students and
collected by Richard Lederer, author, self-professed word-lover, and former teacher. Visit
his excellent website on language, Richard
Lederer’s Verbivore
David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. David also
fought with the Finkelsteins, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one
of David’s sons, had 300 wives and 700 porcupines.
Homer also wrote The Oddity, in which Penelope was the last
hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey.
In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits,
and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. …There were no wars
in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn’t climb over to see what
they were doing.
Without the Greeks we wouldn’t have history. The Greeks
invented three kinds of columns—Corinthian, Doric, and Ironic. They also had myths. A
myth is a female moth.
__________________________________
In an attempt to profess his love for a group of Latino leaders
listening in, Al Gore stated, "Yo quiero mucho."
___________________________________
And for anyone wondering how to say "scooter" or
"kickboard" (those skateboards with handlebars that are all the rage lately) in
French, it’s "trottinette," as seen in a recent issue of Le
Point.
| Sept.
11 |
General
Meeting
Election results will be announced |
| Oct.
16 |
Career
Management and Self-Promotion
Life/work planner Deborah Knox |
| Nov.
13 |
Voice-over
Work
Voice samples will be taken after the presentation |
| December |
Christmas
Party—Who has a house to volunteer? |
| Jan. 8 |
TBA |
| Feb. 12 |
TBA |
| March 12 |
Taxes for the Self-employed |
| April 21 |
NETA Conference and Exhibition |
| May 14 |
TBA |
| Also planned: How ATA Accreditation Exams
are Graded, presented by NETA members who grade the exams. |
Meetings are at Boston College’s McGuinn Hall,
fifth floor faculty lounge. For directions and a map, go to www.bc.edu/cwis/campus_maps/campus_maps.html.
ATA 41st Annual
Conference
Sept. 20–23, 2000
Orlando, FL
Contact: conference@atanet.org
ATA Accreditation Exam
October date being planned
Contact: Terry Hanlen, ATA, (703) 683-6100.
Multilingual Documentation for the
Automotive Industry Symposium
Oct. 12–13, 2000
Presymposium workshop on how to buy the right translation
Oct. 11, 2000
Dearborn, MI
Contact: Tel. (724) 772-7148,
online: shop.sae.org/calendar/topreg.shtml
BU Translation Lecture Series
Spring 2001
Watch this space for more details.
NETA STEERING COMMITTEE
Jacq Benard, jacq@cape.com
Christine Schmitt Castle, cscastle@yahoo.com
Regina Correia-Branco, rcorreiabranco@necc.mass.edu
Françoise Forbes, fdforbes@rcn.com
Bill Grimes, gandl@mediaone.net
Rudy Heller, rudyheller@aol.com
Ken Kronenberg, kkrone@tiac.net
Isabel Leonard, 73352.642@compuserve.com
Brigitte Mackowiak, bbmack@compuserve.com
Jill Orenstein, juliruge@yahoo.com
Suzanne Owen, chrisd@channel1.com
Diana Rhudick, drhudick@mediaone.net |
NETA accepts individual members only. A one-year
membership costs $30 and runs Sept. 1–Aug. 31.
Election results to be announced at the
September 11 meeting!
|
Ken Kronenberg