Apr

8

Best blogs round-up for translators

Filed under starting up in translation, translation profession 

Here are a couple of blogs I’m keeping an eye on at the moment, of specific interest to translators:

Blogamundo: snippets of info on all aspects of language on the web, as well as translation, localisation, machine translation, accessibility, etc. Something here for everyone.

Get Direct Clients: no guarantees it will do exactly what it says on the tin, but this site still coontains a host of useful posts aimed at translators starting out in the freelance field.

Language Log: intelligent, well thought out discussions on a range of topical language matters. Frequent posts by a team of academics specialising in linguistics. A good starting point for anybody with a love of languages, translation, etc.

International Telecommuting Translator: posts on various aspects of setting up and running a translation business. A bit of a mixed bag in that it contains advice aimed at project managers and potential buyers of translation, as well as anyone considering a career in translation, either freelance or inhouse.

ICE: an international calendar of events for the translation industry. OK, not a blog exactly but you can subscribe to the RSS feed to keep up to date with what’s happening.

It’s amazing how much is out there - I use Technorati to keep an eye out for new ones.

Comments

3 Responses to “Best blogs round-up for translators”

  1. brian on April 9th, 2007 3:11 am

    Hi, you should also check out the Worldwide Lexicon (www.worldwidelexicon.org). We just unveiled our RSS+wiki translation tool.

    It watches a site’s RSS feed, and makes it easy for a site to recruit its own readers to translate it to whatever languages they speak. The translations are published via html and via RSS.

  2. thenakedtranslator on April 12th, 2007 12:45 pm

    Hi Brian

    This does look like a very interesting project.

    As I understand it, WWL is an experimental, open source service which enables multilingual readers of blogs and other online material to have a bash at translating that material, for the benefit, presumably, of monolingual readers who might not otherwise have access to that material. As a wiki-based service, anyone can chose to translate any piece of material, as far as I can see, and can also edit anyone else’s work.

    It’s great to see a translation technology expect acknowledge the shortcomings of machine translation, and try to get humans in on the process instead. I also applaud your efforts to open the internet to a wider, non-English speaking audience.

    But even thought this is still in an experimental phase, its shortcomings obviously lie in the fact that the service assumes a pool of readers who are willing *and able* to translate the material in the first place! (and for free!)

    As a professional translator I guess I could be such a reader, but I’m not sure how I’d feel about my name being put to a translation which could be randomly edited by “mere” multilinguists :) Just yesterday The Times ran an article on the issues this approach has caused for Wikipedia (see http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article1637535.ece) And as a blogger, I’m not sure how I feel about having versions of my posts floating around whose quality I’m unable to verify.(Arguably there’s nothing I can do to stop that happening even without WWL, of course)

    But putting my professional reservations aside, I say vive collaborative open source projects! This looks like a fascinating experiment and I’ll certainly follow it with interest.

    Best of luck!

    Sarah

  3. Translatorli on April 16th, 2007 6:23 am

    Hello nakedtranslator
    You have a good grasp of my blog.Thanks.
    I will also keep an eye of your blog.

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