Into English Ltd. Newsletter - April 2007

Welcome to the third monthly instalment of the Into English Ltd. newsletter!

Newsflash

In this section you will find the latest Into English Ltd. news, hot off the press!

April saw Into English Ltd. registered for VAT (Value Added Tax) in England. This brings added benefit to all clients who are similarly registered as they shall now be able to claim VAT from Into English Ltd. invoices back from HMRC (Revenue and Customs). Please speak to your accountant or tax advisor for further information. Alternatively see, www.hmrc.gov.uk.

Clients registered for VAT equivalent in other EU countries are advised to supply Into English Ltd. with their registration number on Purchase Orders to obtain VAT charged at 0%.

The Into English Ltd. site (www.intoenglish.eu) is due to be updated soon, so visit regularly for the latest information.

Also, if you have any comments, we would be very grateful to hear them. Please email: rebecca@intoenglish.eu

£££ Offers and deals £££

Watch this space every month for our latest promotional deals

Due to the success of previous months’ offers, Into English Ltd. have committed to continuing to offer competitive rates for quality translations. If you have a French text which you need translating into English, or an English text that needs proofreading then contact Into English Ltd.

Showcase

Here you will find links to some of our favourite websites of the month. Into English Ltd. accepts no responsibility for the content of external links.

Q. What is the Into English Ltd. top website this month?

A. www.proz.com

Q. Why is it so good?

A. Proz.com is the internet’s leading workplace for linguists. Clients sometimes ask us for languages other than French and English – this site is always recommended.

Other sites we liked this month:

www.brainbashers.com – a site packed full of sudoku, puzzles and trivia to keep the grey matter on form.

www.bbc.co.uk/weather - perfect for deciding whether or not to have a BBQ at the weekend!

And finally…

The good, the bad, and the source text

Every month we like to give a reminder of the disastrous ‘translations’ that free translation engine websites churn out. Good for a laugh, but bad for business! If you would like advice on how to get French to English translation done the smart way, contact rebecca@intoenglish.eu or visit our website: www.intoenglish.eu for more information on the polished and professional services we provide.

Step 1. Take one piece of French text from an article:

“Segolène Royal recueille 25,87% des voix au premier tour de l'élection présidentielle. Première femme présente au second tour d'une élection présidentielle en France, saura-t-elle accéder à la fonction supreme?”*

*This month’s excerpt is from www.quid.fr

Step 2. Ask a free translation engine to do its best:

“Segolène Royal collects 25,87% of the voices to the first turn of the presidential election. First woman present at the second turn of a presidential election in France, will it be able to reach the supreme function?”**

** This month’s ‘translation’ website is http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr

And here’s how Into English Ltd. would solve it:

“Segolène Royal received 25.87% of votes during the first round of the French presidential election. As the first female candidate ever to make it through to the second round, will she be able to gain access to France’s top post?”

This test once again proving that machine translation is never a replacement for a skilled human translator.

Every month we’ll be featuring different sources for this simple test. If you have any suggestions, please send them to rebecca@intoenglish.eu

Backdated issue of the Into English Ltd. Newsletter - March 2007

Welcome to the second monthly instalment of the Into English Ltd. newsletter!

Newsflash

In this section you will find the latest Into English Ltd. news, hot off the press!

March’s top news at Into English Ltd. was our PayPal registration. We can now accept secure payments online via PayPal. Clients may use PayPal to pay via credit card as well, so you can use this facility even if you do not have a PayPal account.

For further details, please see www.paypal.com

The Into English Ltd. site (www.intoenglish.eu) is also updated and added to regularly, so please visit frequently for the latest information.

Also, if you have any comments, we would be very grateful to hear them. Please email: rebecca@intoenglish.eu

£££ Offers and deals £££

Watch this space every month for our latest promotional deals

Due to the success of last month’s offer, Into English Ltd. have committed to continuing to offer competitive rates for quality translations. If you have a French text which you need translating into English, or an English text that needs proofreading then contact Into English Ltd.

Showcase

Here you will find links to some of our favourite websites of the month. Into English Ltd. accepts no responsibility for the content of external links.

Q. What is the Into English Ltd. top website this month?

A. Eurodicautom, the European Commission's multilingual term bank: http://ec.europa.eu/eurodicautom/Controller?ACTION=guide

Q. Why is it so good?

A. Eurodicautom is perfect for looking up the ‘official’ translation of technical terms – also handy if you only want one or two words translated. Currently Eurodicautom is gradually being replaced by IATE (Interactive Terminology for Europe) – there are links to the IATE site on Eurodicautom.

Other sites we liked this month:

www.lifehacker.com – lots of IT hints and other tips to improve your life

www.myheritage.com – Just for fun, a nifty site which analyses an uploaded photo of yourself and tells you which celebrities you look like!

And finally…

The good, the bad, and the source text

Every month we like to give a reminder of the disastrous ‘translations’ that free translation engine websites churn out. Good for a laugh, but bad for business! If you would like advice on how to get French to English translation done the smart way, contact rebecca@intoenglish.eu or visit our website: www.intoenglish.eu for more information on the polished and professional services we provide.

Step 1. Take one piece of French text from an article:

“Le 23-3-2007 a eu lieu à 0h00 le lancement européen de la Playstation 3 du géant japonais Sony. La dernière née des consoles de 7e génération n'a pas suscité un engouement comparable au lancement de ses rivales, la XBox 360 de Microsoft et la Wii de Nintendo, respectivement sur le marché depuis fin 2005 et fin 2006”*

*This month’s excerpt is from www.quid.fr

Step 2. Ask a free translation engine to do its best:

“The 23-3-2007 took place at 0 h 00 the European launching of Playstation 3 of the Japanese giant Sony. The last born of the consoles of 7th generation did not provoke a comparable infatuation in the launching of its rivals, XBox 360 of Microsoft and the Wii de Nintendo, respectively on the market since the end of 2005 and the end of 2006.”**

** This month’s ‘translation’ website is http://translation2.paralink.com/

And here’s how Into English Ltd. would solve it:

“At mid-night on 23^rd March, Japanese giant, Sony, launched its Playstation 3. However, this latest of the 7^th generation consoles has not provoked as much of a craze as its rivals, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii, which have been on the market since the end of 2005 and the end of 2006 respectively.”

This test once again proving that machine translation is never a replacement for a skilled human translator.

Every month we’ll be featuring different sources for this simple test. If you have any suggestions, please send them to rebecca@intoenglish.eu

Backdated issue of the Into English Ltd. Newsletter - February 2007

Welcome to the first monthly instalment of the Into English Ltd. newsletter!

Newsflash

In this section you will find the latest Into English Ltd. news, hot off the press!

February’s top news at Into English Ltd. was the launch of our website. Thank you to the many respected contacts who participated in our survey to help choose the website’s domain name. It was almost a photo-finish between the .co.uk site and the .eu site. In the end the winner was www.intoenglish.eu , thanks to its pan-European appeal. Never fear, if you also click on www.in2english.co.uk, you will be transported by the magic of the internet to the main site. The same even goes for www.intoenglish.biz !

The site is updated and added to regularly, so please visit frequently for the latest information. For all our francophone readers, keep watching the site for la version française – coming soon!

Also, if you have any comments on the site, we would be very grateful to hear them. Please email: rebecca@intoenglish.eu

£££ Offers and deals £££

Watch this space every month for our latest promotional deals

Roll-up, Roll-up! Into English Ltd. are currently offering reduced rates for new clients. If you have a French text which you need translating into English, or an English text that needs proofreading then contact Into English Ltd.

Showcase

Here you will find links to some of our favourite websites of the month. Into English Ltd. accepts no responsibility for the content of external links.

Q. What is Into English Ltd. top website this month?

A. http://www.traduguide.com/tr/19545.htm www.traduguide.com

Q. Why is it so good?

A. Well, it has an intuitive interface and members can share knowledge on specific translation issues.

Other sites we liked this month:

www.helium.com – a creative outlet for the writer within you!

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accueil - your favourite free encyclopaedia, but in French.

And finally…

The good, the bad, and the source text

Every month we like to remind you of the disastrous ‘translations’ the free translation engine websites churn out. Good for a laugh, but bad for business! If you would like advice on how to get French to English translation done the smart way, contact rebecca@intoenglish.eu or visit our website: www.intoenglish.eu for more information on the polished and professional services we provide.

Step 1. Take one piece of French text from a newspaper article:

“Les "budgétaires" du parti de Nicolas Sarkozy ont arraché, jeudi 15 février, le principe qu'aucune dépense de fonctionnement ne soit financée par l'emprunt.”*

*This month’s excerpt is from www.lemonde.fr

Step 2. Ask a free translation engine to do its best:

“the “budgetary ones” of the party of Nicolas Sarkozy tore off, Thursday February 15, the principle which no operating expenditure is financed by the loan.”**

** This month’s ‘translation’ website is www1.worldlingo.com

Oh dear. Would you be happy to send a text like this to your clients? We thought not. Here’s how Into English Ltd. would solve it:

“On Thursday, 15^th February, Nicolas Sarkozy’s Party budget makers rebuked the suggestion that running costs were partially or wholly loan-funded.”

It just goes to show that machine translation can never replace a skilled human translator.

Every month we’ll be featuring different sources for this simple test. If you have any suggestions, please send them to rebecca@intoenglish.eu

• English proofreading and summary services also available.
• Other languages upon request.
• For more information, please visit our website: www.intoenglish.eu

• Nous fournissons aussi la correction d'épreuves ou le résumé des textes anglais.
• Traductors d'autres langues sur demande.
• Pour plus d'information, veuillez voir: www.intoenglish.eu

And Now the News...

When I was studying for the Chartered Institute of Linguists' Diploma in Translation,
I got into the habit of reading the newspapers (both French and English) as part of my preparation. The reason behind this was that most of the exam texts are taken from indigenous press articles. For those of you interested, scroll down to the bottom of this Blog entry for a list of papers I found useful whilst studying for the Diploma.

As a translator I think it can be very helpful to keep abreast of current affairs, especially in the countries which speak the languages you work in. It just might give you the edge when quoting for a project. So as well as operation Get-A- Life (see previous Blog entry), I'm also continuing with my Keep-Updated initiative.

Obviously there are far more news sources (papers, magazines, TV newsreels, sites, RSS and Atom feeds, News channels etc. etc.) than one person could ever hope to trawl through on a daily basis. Between running my own business and running my own household, there's really not that many minutes in the day left to lounge around with a Starbucks and read the newspapers in a leisurely fashion.

So I tend to just whip through the headlines and decide which one or two stories deserve my time. This works well for me as I get a quick overview of what's been happening in various areas of current affairs and then a couple of nuggets of info which really interest me.

An unlikely source (perhaps) for all you headline junkies out there is the Nintendo Wii. If you haven't already heard about this decade's most exciting development in home gaming, then quite frankly where have you been?! But apart from cute little plumbers dressed in denim, Hubby and I have recently discovered that if you hook the Wii up to the web, this cunning white box harbours an entire globe of information. Quite literally. You are presented with a spherical world map which you can manipulate with the wii-mote and main news stories from various countries are displayed at their geographical location. ('ar, so that's where Bucharest is...') A neat feature which can provide a welcome diversion from the normal diet of printed comment and analysis.

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Press Reading List for IOL Diploma in Translation, French into English

For the General Exam

• The Times (articles by their correspondent in France: Charles Bremner)
  
• The Guardian (or the Guarniad as it is also dubbed)
• The Independent
  
• The Financial Times (which I got a free 4-week subscription to as a small business!)
  
• Le Monde
• Le Figaro

For the Scientific and Technological Exams

• The New Scientist
• National Geographic Magazine
• Le Nouvel Observateur

There's Something About Translation...: LifeHacks for Mobile Translators

There's Something About Translation...: LifeHacks for Mobile Translators

I really like this blog; it speaks right to me - here's a link to it!

Translating: a solitary profession

When I tell people I'm a freelance translator they always, amongst other things, ask me: "Do you not find it really lonely working at home?"

Well, the answer is yes, I do find it lonely sometimes. However, throughout my life I have always been fine in a solitary environment. But the more people ask me this question, the more I'm beginning to think it is a little unhealthy to have nothing but the PC screen for company.

Of course, I get to chat with my Husband in the evenings and I wonder if I end up rabbiting on like a dotty old biddy. I guess you know it's bad when you actually contemplate asking the postman in for a coffee and a chin-wag.

So, my next goal is to make some friends in the area and get out more. In other words - operation Get-A-Life has commenced. It helps being in London; there are often translators' forums and get-togethers called pow-wows advertised on my favourite linguists' website (www.proz.com).

I think this would be a good move... if not for my career then for my sanity!

Things are picking up...

Since the last post, business has picked up. Hence the gap between postings!

I'm very pleased with the progress I'm making in the freelance translation sector. I've had four or five projects to work on and they've all be technical or scientific texts. Some of them have been more interesting than others (there's only so long different specifications for concrete can hold my interest!) and I've particularly enjoyed the pieces I've been asked to do about offshore oil rig construction. The end-client requested my services again for more texts on the same topic which was very gratifying as far as feedback goes.

I find it really educational doing these technical texts as they bring a bit of diversity into my otherwise language-dominated knowledge base. Thankfully I do have enough scientific background and training to grasp the concepts being dealt with, and the research skills I learnt during my literary studies have come in very handy indeed!

I've found also that my MS Word skills are coming on in leaps and bounds; I'm turning into a shortcut-key junky and my poor mouse is becoming more and more neglected!

Seriously considering getting Trados or similar translation software soon, as I think it would be a good investment. I could use it to create automated glossaries which I can in turn trade in for extended membership to some of the translators' sites I am a member of.

One of the pieces I had to translate recently was only available in hard copy or pdf. I stupidly accepted the job (and below my normal rate as well). It took me AGES extra to type from scratch rather than overwrite a word doc! Not going to make that mistake again; from now on it's word doc's only for me. I could buy an pdf converter I suppose, but it's not on my top list of purchases to make.

Until next time, keep on bloggin'